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Rediscover: La Ciénaga
Lucrecia Martel specializes in the cinema of disorientation. Though she has amassed a critically-acclaimed body of work, the Argentinian director’s first film, La Ciénaga (2001), remains quite possibly...
View ArticleBlind
There is a humorous moment somewhere past the halfway mark of Blind where the film’s blind narrator, Ingrid (Ellen Dorrit Petersen), watches television and comments that it is the one activity that is...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: A Talking Pony!?!
A perfect movie is sometimes defined as one that doesn’t have a wasted frame. Prolific director David DeCoteau does better than that: not only does he not waste a frame, he reuses the same frame over...
View ArticleComing Home
During the late 1980s and early ‘90s, director Zhang Yimou and actor Gong Li had an ongoing collaboration—as well as a behind-the-scenes romantic entanglement—rivaling that of Jean-Luc Godard and Anna...
View ArticleOeuvre: Herzog’s Feature Films: Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Politics has never been Werner Herzog’s forte. With the exception of Into the Abyss, his study on the death penalty, his most explicitly political documentaries have largely centered on the destruction...
View ArticleThe Visit
Of course there’s a twist. It’s M. Night Shyamalan, the writer-director known for audience manipulation. Following yet another disappointment in 2013’s After Earth, he’s back in newly meta form with...
View ArticleGoodnight Mommy
What do you want from a movie? Tight narrative construction that makes you think ahead, guess and get swept up in the story? Maybe big ideas and/or visceral gut punches, something that will make you...
View ArticleSleeping with Other People
Always approach rom-coms with caution, especially when they purport to subvert the genre. The “subversive” ones are, quite often, the ones that adhere closest to the formulas. Writer-director Leslye...
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Revisit: Don’t Look Now
Midway through “Lime Tree Arbour,” a stand-out track on the much loved The Boatman’s Call, Nick Cave claims, “There will always be suffering/ It flows through life like water.” In art, water has long...
View ArticleTime Out of Mind
Although much of the discussion around Time Out of Mind will pertain to the credibility of Richard Gere’s portrayal of a homeless man in New York City, the film’s real star is Bobby Bukowski, favored...
View ArticleMeet the Patels
Meet the Patels is a straightforward documentary about cultural differences and dating. But pulsing underneath it is a sibling rivalry that gives the film enough tension to make it more than just a...
View ArticleCriminally Underrated: Mr. Jealousy
For those who saw Noah Baumbach’s debut feature, Kicking and Screaming, during its brief theatrical run in 1995, Mr. Jealousy may have seemed a disappointment—though less so than his botched sophomore...
View ArticleOeuvre: Herzog’s Feature Films: My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done
It sounds great on paper: My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, a film by Werner Herzog, produced by David Lynch, starring Michael Shannon and Willem Dafoe. The result? It comes as no surprise that the...
View ArticleBlack Mass
This has been a year of contrast for Johnny Depp. The megastar whose name has become virtually synonymous with hours spent in the makeup chair used little more than mustache wax for his ill-advised...
View ArticlePawn Sacrifice
Chess is one of those impenetrable pastimes, like sudoku or water polo, that are difficult to center a cinematic narrative around. To make the cerebral struggle that typifies the game something...
View ArticleHellions
Maternal anxiety has proved a horror film fallback for decades, popping up in the likes of Rosemary’s Baby, David Cronenberg’s The Brood, and standouts from the recent New French Extremity,...
View ArticleRediscover: The Pied Piper
Few genres present such bleak prospects as the medieval costume drama. Whether depicting devious court intrigue, the exploits of valiant knights or the majestic sweep of epic battles, these movies have...
View ArticleCooties
The best horror films tap into some sort of real life fear and extrapolate that fright into something concrete that you can physically run from or attack head on, with a flamethrower or a chainsaw....
View ArticleEast Side Sushi
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. The setting is a popular restaurant, one steeped in high standards and well-established mores. Enter our culinary hero, hard on luck and inexperienced, but also...
View ArticleThe New Girlfriend
François Ozon is a filmmaker in an enviable position, straddling what’s often called “high” and “low” art. His early work in particular is marked by a campy tone and salacious subject matter. In Water...
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