Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot
Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, the latest from director Gus Van Sant, doesn’t quite work. As a biopic, it’s serviceable. As a weighty drama, it’s hackneyed. For a quirky, dark comedy, it’s...
View ArticleOeuvre: Brooks: Young Frankenstein
The completely correct order for watching Frankenstein movies is as follows: James Whale’s Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and Mel Brooks and Gene...
View ArticleMamma Mia! Here We Go Again
The debut of a half-prequel, half-sequel to a film adaptation of a stage adaptation of the greatest hits of a co-ed, European pop quarto is very 2018. Lamenting the lack of original material in...
View ArticleGeneration Wealth
“I probably know the names of the Kardashians more than the names of my neighbors,” Noah Greenfield says to the camera held by his mother, Lauren, in Generation Wealth. Greenfield has documented wealth...
View ArticleMcQueen
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2011 exhibition Savage Beauty, a posthumous survey of work by British fashion designer Alexander McQueen (1969-2010), was so dramatically staged that it played out more...
View ArticleThe Third Murder
The Third Murder opens in unexpected territory for director Hirokazu Kore’eda, with a brutal murder playing out in an empty field, the light of a burning corpse flickering against a distant skyline....
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Rediscover: Desert Hearts
It is easy to forget that when Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee’s mainstream film about gay cowboys starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, bowed in 2005 that movies featuring homosexual lead characters...
View ArticleDamascus Cover
There is a certain type of film that defies normal standards of critical judgement; hastily composed because the budget is low but the actors are semi-big names, it features exotic locations and a...
View ArticleBo Burnham Talks Eighth Grade, Technology and More
“It was fucking brutal.” So says comedian Bo Burnham, discussing his most embarrassing eighth grade moment. “I got pantsed on a whale-watching trip,” says Burnham. “It’s certainly a memory.” It seems...
View ArticleKing Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen
King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen, outside of its sloppily long title, is the ideal delivery system for converting non-believers to the Church of Cohen. The maverick multi-hyphenate...
View ArticleHoly Hell! The Truman Show Turns 20
By now, we all know that Shakespeare in Love shouldn’t have won Best Picture at the 71st Academy Awards. Most folks will tell you that the laurels should have been bestowed upon Steven Spielberg’s...
View ArticleTeen Titans GO! To The Movies
There’s not a particularly good reason for there to be a feature film based around the animated series Teen Titans GO!, nor is there sound rationale for releasing it theatrically. The series is...
View ArticleMission: Impossible – Fallout
For all the elaborate stunts and action sequences of Mission: Impossible films, the plots have largely remained the same. Impossible Mission Force agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), is invariably tasked...
View ArticleGood Manners
Fans of art films, indie horror and LGBT+ representation will badly want to love Good Manners. It seemingly has everything: beguiling leads, a stunning and complex setting, frequently sharp camera and...
View ArticleHot Summer Nights
We’re living in the grips of a nostalgia boom, and since the ‘80s have cannibalized themselves Hollywood has turned to a new decade to memorialize: the ‘90s. But in watching one of the first to ride...
View ArticleThe Captain
German filmmaker Robert Schwentke has made quite a few middle of the road English language films, each disappointing or confounding in its own mediocre way. So the trailer for his latest film, The...
View ArticleOur House
The subject of grief has found its way into some of the most successful horror movies of the last few years: The Babadook focused on the stress and anxiety of single parenthood following the loss of a...
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Revisit: Monterey Pop
“I think it’s going to be like Easter and Christmas and New Years and your birthday all together, you know!” a blonde girl exclaims at the opening of D.A. Pennebaker’s Monterey Pop (1968) the...
View ArticleAlong with the Gods: The Last 49 Days
There is a moment in one of the four hells of director Yong-hwa Kim’s South Korean fantasy epic Along with the Gods: The Last 49 Days where Dante meets Jurassic Park. Gang-lim (Jung-woo Ha), one of the...
View ArticleNico, 1988
About the only thing definitively established by the generically titled biopic Nico, 1988 is that its subject, the singer best known for her stint with the Velvet Underground, didn’t want to be...
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