Woman Walks Ahead
Can a film be well performed, beautifully shot, passionately written and competently directed, but still be an absolute bore? In director Susanna White’s Woman Walks Ahead, that appears to be the case....
View ArticleThe First Purge
The problem with The Purge franchise is that for three films—with slight positive exceptions in sophomore effort The Purge: Anarchy (2014)—an immensely smart idea has been executed with baffling...
View ArticleThree Identical Strangers
Three Identical Strangers is a one-of-a-kind documentary that shifts gears and detours so often that, by its end, the winding path we travel leads straight into jaw-dropping revelations, unanswered...
View ArticleWhitney
Director Kevin Macdonald has a deft hand for tragedy. His 1999 documentary One Day in September, which won him an Oscar, tells the bleak story of the athletes murdered at the 1972 Olympic Games in...
View ArticleSorry to Bother You
The sharpness of contemporary digital images is particularly pronounced in Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You. The intensity of the image detail combines with the mostly static images to emphasize the...
View ArticleAnt-Man and the Wasp
Let’s pause and reflect that there is now an Ant-Man franchise. What that says about the state of Hollywood’s rampant sequel culture, and the total dominance of superhero pictures, is up for debate....
View ArticleBleeding Steel
For all its flaws, the loopier-than-usual Jackie Chan vehicle Bleeding Steel deserves at least one honorary award: Most Outstanding Deployment of the Dramatic Device Known as Chekhov’s Teddy Bear....
View ArticleUnder the Tree
It is easy to decipher the intentions of Under the Tree, and its screen cultural reference points are readily apparent as well. It is a black comedy satirizing the vagaries and ennui of contemporary...
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Revisit: Vampyr
Can you imagine a time when vampires were fresh on the big screen? An era before Lestat, Twilight and numerous Dracula films, when the mystery of the undead still surprised and frightened? Vampirism...
View ArticleRyuichi Sakamoto: Coda
Director Stephen Nomura Schible’s documentary Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda perfectly captures the somber side of the beloved composer but fails to better engage the other facets of his work and history. It’s...
View ArticleA Swingers Weekend
A Swingers Weekend, a low-budget Canadian comedy from director Jon E. Cohen, centers on the timely subject of non-monogamy and polyamory, focusing on a group of friends comprised of three vanilla...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Belly Turns 20
Few film genres feel as locked into a particular time period as blaxploitation. The name alone conjures sounds of scratching funk guitar and images of flamboyant hustlers and low-level dealers. Though...
View ArticleSkyscraper
Only in a marketplace crowded with superhero movies and franchise fare could a movie about The Rock saving his family from a giant building on fire feel like a breath of fresh air. In Skyscraper, the...
View ArticleOeuvre: Brooks: Blazing Saddles
There’s a scene in Mel Brooks’ phenomenal career highpoint, Blazing Saddles—which, mind you, is the funniest film ever produced—where Harvey Korman’s Hedley “It’s Hedley, Not Hedy” Lamarr is...
View ArticleWhat Will People Say
What Will People Say is a film that pairs well with Brooklyn, a darling of the 2016 Academy Awards. Both films are about the travails of immigrant women, coming of age and caught between two worlds....
View ArticleRediscover: Caravaggio
Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio is easy to appreciate but difficult to love, as it appeals to the senses but also rejects easy consumption. The film, a fictional biopic of the famed Baroque painter...
View ArticleThe Night Eats the World
Zombie films are a well-trod genre in which innovation has become increasingly rare. To be fair, with two popular zombie-themed television series currently airing (not to mention the hundreds of books,...
View ArticleSiberia
A stylish crime drama that only occasionally catches fire, Siberia may be the weakest entry in Keanu Reeves’ resurgence as a kind of deadpan action hero—but that just makes it a near miss. Despite a...
View ArticleEighth Grade
Stand-up comic/former YouTube personality Bo Burnham follows in the footsteps of many a comedian-auteur with his writing and directorial debut Eighth Grade. But where many funnymen broke through with...
View ArticleCriminally Overrated: WALL-E
The first 40 minutes of WALL-E, Pixar’s ninth full-length feature, are nothing short of revolutionary. Here’s a blockbuster, which opens in post-apocalyptic hell, a long-abandoned Earth buried in...
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