The Strangers: Prey at Night
The Strangers (2008), a slow-burn home invasion tale starring Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman, was in many ways a more entertaining version of 2007’s Funny Games, Michael Haneke’s remake of his own 1997...
View ArticleA Wrinkle in Time
It took more than five decades for A Wrinkle in Time to make it to the silver screen. Madeline L’Engle’s novel may be slender, but, to channel Mrs. Who with a quote from Whitman, it contains...
View ArticleThe Leisure Seeker
“I wear diapers, white boy!” Uttered by a wheelchair-bound Dick Gregory, such embarrassing dialogue gives the comedian activist just a fraction of the indignities heaped upon the veteran actors who...
View ArticleThe Death of Stalin
As with any state of affairs combining omnipresent peril with institutional irrationality, totalitarianism is fairly ridiculous at its core. Enclosed worlds constructed around the illusion of...
View ArticleThe Forgiven
There was a period between 1992 and 2006 when The Forgiven would have been considered an important movie, now its existence calls into question the wisdom of redemptive arcs for white supremacist in...
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Revisit: Stalker
The central question that plagues viewers of Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 classic is: what exactly is the Zone? If you believe the director himself, Tarkovsky once claimed that the Zone, a portal...
View Article1:54
1:54, the debut feature-length film of Québécois writer-director Yan England, is a well-acted and emotionally raw film that reaches powerful emotional heights only to crash and burn because of...
View ArticleClaire’s Camera
The seemingly endless mutability of Hong Sang-soo’s spartan filmmaking continues to be one of the marvels of contemporary filmmaking. Claire’s Camera, one of three features to float around film...
View ArticleHoly Hell! You’ve Got Mail Turns 20
Of all the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan romantic comedies, You’ve Got Mail truly packs a one-two nostalgia punch. Emblematic of ‘90s rom-coms and intrinsically tied with that decade’s biggest technology boom,...
View ArticleOeuvre: Gilliam: 12 Monkeys
After finishing The Fisher King on time and on budget and seeing the film go on to critical and financial success, Terry Gilliam felt his reputation as an overspending prima donna had been...
View ArticleLove, Simon
Love, Simon is the teen love story that gay audiences have been owed for the past 30 years. Too many young gay viewers had to grow up unable to completely relate to the romantic inclinations of...
View ArticleTomb Raider
In Hollywood’s latest futile attempt to convince itself video games make reasonable source material for film adaptations, the new Tomb Raider borrows precious little from its Angelina Jolie-fronted...
View ArticleJourney’s End
World War I is the least cinematic of major historical conflicts, its quagmires of trench stalemate and thorny diplomatic obligations the culmination of decades, if not centuries, of European...
View ArticleRediscover: Seeds
His budgets were practically non-existent. His gritty production values were exacerbated by a 16mm camera with an unreliable viewfinder; no matter, he shot on throwaway film stock, anyway. He...
View ArticleFlower
Flower is a coming-of-age comedy that sets itself up with a unique challenge: It depicts a loss of innocence in someone who isn’t all that innocent to begin with. In the opening scene, 17-year-old...
View ArticleDear Dictator
There’s an argument to be made that the ensuing culture clash when an authoritarian island-nation strongman is forced to hole up with an angsty teenager in suburban America is fertile ground for...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: The Ritual
The one thing that a creepy creature feature absolutely needs to get right is its monster. The Ritual’s villain—a strange and terrifying mixture of human, moose and haunted wardrobe—was created by...
View ArticleRamen Heads
Ramen Heads is a visually-impressive food documentary that takes the viewer on a curated eating tour of Japan. While it never decides on the appropriate tone or its preferred audience, it remains...
View ArticleOeuvre: Gilliam: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
After the critical and commercial success of his previous two features, Terry Gilliam wound up taking over for Repo Man director Alex Cox and helming Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, based on the...
View ArticleUnsane
When Steven Soderbergh returned from his premature feature filmmaking retirement last year with Logan Lucky, he was received less with celebration than a collective feeling of inevitability. The...
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