In Between
Fans of Lena Dunham’s “Girls” and Andrew Haigh’s lesser-known series “Looking” will instantly feel at home with the sharp, cosmopolitan sensibility of Maysaloun Hamoud’s excellent debut feature In...
View ArticleThe Strange Ones
With The Strange Ones, directors Christopher Radcliff and Lauren Wolkstein attempt to create a profound enigma by simply obscuring the details. Their hazily sketched characters, the handsome adult Nick...
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Revisit: Ugetsu
Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu (1953) is a story that rests upon the notion that the follies of mankind could lead to ruination, but it’s within human nature to push onward. Often cited as one of the best...
View ArticleDevil’s Gate
Genre lovers may imagine a confluence of horror, mystery and the supernatural as an ideal watch, but in the wrong hands, it can be a convoluted mess that fails to do justice to any of its genre...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Pleasantville Turns 20
Ironic as it is, I first saw Pleasantville at my grandmother’s house. It was one of the few VHS tapes she owned and probably contained a few too many heady ideas for someone under the age of 10. But...
View ArticleOeuvre: Demme: Ricki and the Flash
Some careers end with a bang, and others with a whimper. Jonathan Demme’s feature film career ended with neither, which feels appropriate considering the unique jumble of films in the director’s...
View ArticleThe Commuter
Liam Neeson has found a consistent late-career gig as a kick-ass Everyman with an accent, and in his latest formula thriller, his typically flawed character is the kind of man that many of us can...
View ArticlePaddington 2
Amid the usual sensory overload and simplistic humor that perennially defines children’s films, the first Paddington stood out for its elegance and cheerful wit. Its visual humor was certainly busy,...
View ArticleLover for a Day
Lover for a Day is a film about adult relationships, both romantic and familial, but with a focus on the former. As with director Philippe Garrel’s other films, the central themes are romantic fidelity...
View ArticleSaturday Church
Saturday Church, writer-director Damon Cardasis’ debut feature, is exactly the kind of film that LGBTQ+ audiences hoped that the success of Moonlight would pave the way for, yet it carves a different...
View ArticleRevisit: Detroit
Be Black, Baby is an extended sequence from Hi, Mom!, Brian De Palma’s 1970 film, that features a group of upper class, New York WASPs taking part in a live theater experiment where they will...
View ArticleActs of Violence
Acts of Violence is for people who like Death Wish and First Blood, but find the stories in those movies too subtle and the characters too emotionally complex. Writer Nicolas Aaron Mezzanatto and...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Ever After Turns 20
Before Disney decided it was time to remake all their animated features into live-action ventures, Hollywood thought it was time to revise the fairy tale genre. The revisionist fairy tale attempted to...
View ArticleMary and the Witch’s Flower
Studio Ghibli has a long history of spirited female protagonists, and Ghibli alum Hiromasa Yonebayashi continues in that vein with Mary and the Witch’s Flower, the first film under the new Studio Ponoc...
View ArticleDen of Thieves
Den of Thieves is a movie comprised of and crafted by bargain substitutes. Star Gerard Butler, here playing corrupt LA County Sheriff “Big” Nick O’Brien, is no Russell Crowe. His primary antagonist...
View Article12 Strong
For a post-9/11 action film produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, 12 Strong shows a surprising amount of restraint. Based on the book Horse Soldiers, about the elite force of Green Berets who entered...
View ArticleOeuvre: Demme: Justin Timberlake + the Tennessee Kids
It’s fitting that Jonathan Demme’s final film should be a concert documentary. Not only did the director revolutionize the format, he typically used the concert film to distill his own humanist notions...
View ArticleThe Final Year
A lively and engaging documentary about the last 12 months of the Obama administration, The Final Year ultimately fizzles out because of a lack of a thesis. Director Greg Barker is a veteran...
View ArticleGintama
“Wait, is this where we actually start the live-action film for Q-taro? Holy Crap! That sounds like a much more interesting film!” The third-highest grossing movie in Japan of 2017, Gintama, adapted...
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Rediscover: Marseille Trilogy
Although Marcel Pagnol doesn’t hold a place in the same pantheon as early film greats Vigo, Chaplin, Renoir or Keaton, the French writer and filmmaker helped pioneer cinema’s transition from silent to...
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