The Desert Bride
The Desert Bride is perhaps too finely crafted, too tidily composed. With clever and calibrated filmmaking, co-directors/co-writers Cecilia Atán and Valeria Pivato, tell the story of their protagonist,...
View ArticleMeasure of a Man
Taking place in July 1976, the nostalgia-tinged coming-of-age film Measure of a Man is set along the shores of an exclusive, cabin-lined lake in upstate New York. While the movie is unobjectionable in...
View ArticleOeuvre: Campion: The Piano
Any discussion of Jane Campion’s filmmaking achievements hinges on The Piano, as rightly it should. The erotic romance won Campion the Palme D’Or (she’s still the only female recipient) and an Academy...
View ArticleLife of the Party
As soon as the studio logos appear on screen for Life of the Party we hear the familiar riff of a song by Imagine Dragons, a band that has about 1,101 radio hits currently circulating the airwaves (or,...
View ArticleMountain
Scottish author Robert Macfarlane has published numerous books musing on our relationship with the natural world, frequently delving into the historical and religious while leaving enough room for his...
View ArticleRevenge
Revenge, the debut feature-length film from writer-director Coralie Fargeat, is hideous and beautiful, a riot of color and violence. It is an evolution of the “rape and revenge” brand of exploitation...
View ArticleFilmworker
In making a documentary about the decades-long relationship between Stanley Kubrick and his assistant Leon Vitali, director Tony Zierra has inadvertently captured a damning argument against prevailing...
View ArticleBeast
The key to the crime thriller genre—in every medium, including print, TV and film—is setting. What makes a setting particularly worthy, and therefore what catalyzes a compelling crime thriller, are...
View ArticleRevisit: The Age of Innocence
In The Age of Innocence, Martin Scorsese films Gilded Age Manhattan high society as a resplendent but suffocating tribute to its own wealth. Exaggerations abound, as in the depiction of corpulent,...
View ArticleAlways at the Carlyle
In his documentary work, director Matthew Miele has shown that his first priority as a filmmaker is celebrity. That worked fine for Harry Benson: Shoot First, about the photographer assigned to cover...
View ArticleThe Day After
As Hong Sang-Soo’s filmography continues to expand, each successive movie has come to seem less like an entirely new endeavor than the latest volume in a larger composite whole, defined by precise...
View ArticleThe Seagull
Russian literature is a beast all its own. The dark, pendulous themes and characters can often leave you slogging through 500 pages of wordy prose while you simultaneously contemplate opening up a...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Man in the Iron Mask Turns 20
After Titanic swept the Oscars in 1998, securing 11 awards and making its leads A-listers, many asked what teen heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio would do next. The young man’s face adorned the walls of...
View ArticleOeuvre: Campion: The Portrait of a Lady
Jane Campion opens her adaptation of Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady in almost avant-garde fashion, with audio of contemporary women being interviewed on the subject of romance, describing things...
View ArticleDeadpool 2
Though there’s something undeniably lowest common denominator about Deadpool as a pop cultural icon, Deadpool 2, the sequel to the 2016 runaway hit, has just enough charm to entertain more highbrow...
View ArticleDark Crimes
Providing the lone instance of thought-provoking dialogue in the interminably-paced and deeply misogynistic psychosexual thriller Dark Crimes, the prime suspect in a murder case declares that truth is...
View ArticleOn Chesil Beach
Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach is, like his most famous novel, a story of florid romance and repression manifested through immaturity and guilt. McEwan adapted his own novel for Dominic Cooke’s film, and...
View ArticleRevisit: Avatar
In the PR build to the release of Avengers: Infinity War, James Cameron made some waves by saying he hopes Hollywood develops Marvel fatigue soon, decrying a variety of options for moviegoers hungry...
View ArticleSollers Point
Sollers Point dramatizes many of the most poignant social issues plaguing the United States today, particularly systemic racism, urban decay and misogyny. In several ways, it posits an argument...
View ArticleCriminally Overrated: Sicario
Denis Villeneuve’s 2015 film Sicario was widely praised for its rousing score, gorgeous cinematography and its line-walking script creating a morally-ambiguous tale about the US role in the Mexican...
View Article