Criminally Underrated: The Big Hit
There’s something charming about semi-shitty films from the ‘90s that similarly low hanging fruit released in the aughts and beyond just can’t seem to muster. I’d like to think it’s just the curious...
View ArticleOeuvre: Herzog’s Feature Films: Invincible
“My films come to me very much alive, like dreams without logical patterns or academic explanations,” said Werner Herzog, the director, philosopher and ceaseless marvel. His Invincible (2001) unravels...
View ArticleAmerican Ultra
They say that everybody’s favorite word is their own name. Hollywood seems to believe that cliché extends to our nationality as well. Hardly a year goes by without an American Something. Snipers,...
View ArticleDigging for Fire
Mumblecore has evolved into a recognizable subgenre of independent film. Known for its low budgets, amateur actors and natural dialogue, mumblecore captures the quirks, questions and everyday concerns...
View ArticleBeing Evel
When actor George Hamilton approached daredevil Robert Craig “Evel” Knievel about starring in a biopic based on his life, Knievel pointed a gun at Hamilton’s head and ordered him to read the proposed...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Revisit: Two Days, One Night
The Dardenne brothers have the uncanny ability to empathize with, but never pity, the down-and-out, blue collar characters that populate their films. Much like English director Mike Leigh, the...
View ArticleTop Spin
Exploring the lives of three determined teenage table tennis players as they train for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Sara Newens and Mina T. Son’s documentary Top Spin is to ping pong what Hoop...
View ArticleThe Iron Ministry
J.P. Sniadecki’s The Iron Ministry opens in the shadowy bowels of a passenger train, the camera hesitantly exploring surfaces and textures, darkness gradually giving way to light. Cold, steel and hard...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Alpha House
Few things are more depressing than bad comedy. That’s probably why comedy is mostly absent from the so-bad-it’s-good cultural economy. The charm of a low-rent thriller or sci-fi wannabe is that it...
View ArticleOeuvre: Herzog’s Feature Films: The Wild Blue Yonder
At first blush, combining the phrases “Werner Herzog” and “science fiction fantasy” together in a pitch conjures all manner of exciting eventualities. Perhaps some kind of moss-textured Martian general...
View ArticleWe Are Your Friends
Brace your cochleae and get those fists airborne, because We Are Your Friends comes thumping into theaters this weekend. Set in and around the pungent, drug-addled dance clubs of the San Fernando...
View ArticleThe Second Mother
The dynamic between “the help” and “the helped” is rife with narrative potential. It can be political (The Butler), tender (Cries and Whispers) or criminal (Murderous Maids). Since modern forms of...
View ArticleWhen Animals Dream
The werewolf as a horror narrative vehicle can be inherently restricting. Danish director Jonas Alexander Arnby’s debut When Animals Dream, however, uses lycanthropy as a metaphor. Like Canadian cult...
View ArticleQueen of Earth
Alex Ross Perry’s third film, Listen Up Philip, catapulted the young filmmaker to the upper echelon of independent film makers. Although it’s still early in his career, The Museum of the Moving Image...
View ArticleThe Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
Unlike many ‘60s counter-culture movements, now collectively swaddled in a haze of nostalgic commemoration, the Black Panthers stand out as a stark reminder of a tense, tumultuous period, one whose...
View ArticleHoly Hell: Kicking and Screaming Turns 20
Noah Baumbach’s directorial debut Kicking and Screaming is a classic in the 90’s tradition of witty, talky indie films and the first in a long line of films about quarter-to-midlife crises. 20 years...
View ArticleWelcome to Leith
The arrival of mysterious outsider marks the beginning of many a great story. Drama depends on disruption, and when a bearded man moves into a ramshackle, two-story house in Leith, North Dakota...
View ArticleOeuvre: Herzog’s Feature Films: Rescue Dawn
Much of Werner Herzog’s legend was born in the jungle. An exotic yet oppressive terrain that the famed auteur has called “full of obscenity,” the jungle amplified the harsh realities in some of his...
View ArticleBefore We Go
Chris Evans still loves to play the hero. Even as he tries his hand at working behind the camera with his directorial debut, Before We Go, the character he plays in front of it embodies the tired...
View ArticleRevisit: Mark Ronson: Here Comes The Fuzz
It’s 2015 and Mark Ronson is almost famous. He’s the DJ and producer responsible for the year’s biggest song, “Uptown Funk,” and yet most people know it primarily as a Bruno Mars track. Such has been...
View Article