The 15:17 to Paris
Clint Eastwood’s The 15:17 to Paris is a frustrating salute to three heroes—Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlatos—who together helped thwart an attempted terror attack on a Thalys train to...
View ArticleFifty Shades Freed
Fifty Shades of Grey was a middling movie trying like hell to craft a watchable film from objectively terrible source material. Its sequel, Fifty Shades Darker, was even worse, attempting to pivot into...
View ArticleGolden Exits
The acidic, comic dialogue that defines Alex Ross Perry’s movies is almost entirely absent in Golden Exits, the director’s first stab at a relatively straightforward indie drama. Though the characters...
View ArticlePermission
It can be difficult for audiences to drum up sympathy for characters that cause their own turmoil. Brian Crano hopes to skirt this issue by focusing Permission on a question that many people have had:...
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Revisit: Sid & Nancy
Gary Oldman is likely the only actor who can claim to playing both Sid Vicious and Winston Churchill. Both men occupy disparate corners of the English identity, however, one is definitely held in...
View ArticleDouble Lover
François Ozon’s provocative style, which melds striking visual imagery with transgressive psychosexual themes, veers into impeccably stylish exploitation in Double Lover. We meet Chloé (Marine Vacth)...
View ArticleEntanglement
Struggling to strike a balance between heavy existential drama, magical realism and quirky romantic comedy, Jason James’ sophomore feature Entanglement attempts a mishmash of tones in what ultimately...
View ArticleCriminally Underrated: Lolita
Some movies are formative in a way you’d never expect. I didn’t read Vladimir Nabokov’s novel until I was in college, but I can definitely remember being a teenager and watching this 1997 adaptation of...
View ArticleOeuvre: Gilliam: Time Bandits
Terry Gilliam – in his films, at least – sees the world with the eyes of both a child and an artist, which is never more evident than in his 1981 film Time Bandits. Time Bandits is most memorable for...
View ArticleEarly Man
One of the greatest things about animation is that it stretches the possibilities of cinematic storytelling, essentially creating an endless potential for imaginative output. Animation can bring toys...
View ArticleBlack Panther
We’ve reached the point where making movies for Marvel Studios have become so lucrative that big name actors kneel at its jewel-encrusted altar begging for a role. Everyone from Michael Douglas to...
View ArticleLoveless
Andrey Zvyagintsev’s 2003 debut The Return was structured around the dicey spectacle of children in peril, its adolescent sibling protagonists grappling with the reemergence of their estranged father...
View ArticleWestern
Western is a cinematic slow-burn that masterfully captures many of the central paradoxes of globalization without ever feeling heavy-handed or hasty. The film speaks about communication across...
View ArticleRevisit: Wendy and Lucy
In 2008, homelessness became a much more realistic threat for many Americans, as an era of rampant foreclosures, spikes in unemployment and a tanking economy meant one wrong move or one bad break could...
View ArticleThe Housemaid
It’s been nearly 20 years since The Sixth Sense tied the modern ghost story into a twisted knot, created a masterpiece and made the last-minute reveal an industry standard for the upscale horror movie....
View ArticleThe Boy Downstairs
Is there a film genre more tiresome than indie dramedies about artsy twentysomethings and their solipsistic struggles for romance? It’s such a well-worn form factor for a low-budget movie exercise that...
View ArticleThe Party
No two films by Sally Potter are exactly alike. For more than four decades, the British director has built a truly fascinating filmography, comprised of experimental shorts, narrative features and just...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Armageddon Turns 20
For a movie so blatantly ripped off from someone else’s idea, 1998’s Armageddon remains a unique disaster film. Legend has it that Deep Impact writer Bruce Joel Rubin had every ounce of his script...
View ArticleGame Night
More and more mainstream comedies find themselves expanding in scope and cost to compete with a marketplace full of tentpole genre pictures, but few bridge the gap between laughs and thrills as well as...
View ArticleOeuvre: Gilliam: Brazil
Brazil represents the apex of the first wave of Terry Gilliam’s filmmaking career, the moment in which his thematic preoccupations with escapism and his aesthetic grandeur culminated in a statement...
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