Oeuvre: Brooks: Spaceballs
It’s time for another Spaceballs. Given the divisive audience reaction to the most recent Star Wars films, the middling Solo and the critically-lauded The Last Jedi, the brand is once again rife for...
View ArticleDown a Dark Hall
A teenage melodrama imbued with Spanish-horror aesthetics, Down a Dark Hall looks a lot more accomplished than it is. Sepia-tinged imagery, gothic architecture and a historical perspective on all...
View ArticleJuliet, Naked
What if your ex started dating your favorite musician? That’s the neurotic paranoid fantasy at the heart of Juliet, Naked, adapted, naturally, from a Nick Hornby novel. But if this midlife crisis seems...
View ArticleWe the Animals
We the Animals, the narrative feature debut of documentary filmmaker Jeremiah Zagar (In a Dream) which he and Dan Kitrosser adapted from Justin Torres’ 2011 novel of the same name, is a powerful,...
View ArticleRevisit: The Tin Drum
When Oskar (David Bennent) tells his life story, he starts before the beginning. The narrator and offbeat protagonist of Volker Schlöndorff’s 1979 film, The Tin Drum, begins his origin story with the...
View ArticleMinding the Gap
Poignancy derived from the passage of time plays a similar, if less stark, role in Minding the Gap as it does in “The Up Series” and some of Richard Linklater’s work. But Bing Liu’s debut documentary,...
View ArticlePuppet Master: The Littlest Reich
Rebooting a franchise that has been scampering around since 1989, Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich delivers most of the violent little creatures and mildly inventive gore that your mint-in-box heart...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Black Sunday
The streaming service Shudder has proven itself to be a hidden treasure, providing both an abundance of current horror – both mainstream and indie – yet also finding older gems such as Ken Russell’s...
View ArticleOeuvre: Brooks: Life Stinks
Life Stinks is an anomaly in Mel Brooks’ filmography. After eight films of madcap farce, the director pulled back with a more conventional satiric comedy about a businessman, Goddard Bolt (Brooks), who...
View ArticlePapillon
Based on Henri Charrière’s sensationalized autobiographical novel, Papillon details the man’s (Charlie Hunnam) imprisonment for a trumped-up murder charge. Opening scenes of Henri cracking safes and...
View ArticleThe Happytime Murders
Remember when Trey Parker and Matt Stone filmed an entire feature-length project using violent, sex-addled marionettes? Or when rude puppets made vulgar crank calls on Comedy Central before “The Daily...
View ArticleThe Wife
The Wife, directed by Björn Runge, is a movie about assumptions of genius. Set in 1992, the film begins in the marital bed of Joan (Glenn Close) and Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce) in the hours before...
View ArticleWhat Keeps You Alive
Colin Minihan’s What Keeps You Alive is a tidy little thriller that puts a lesbian spin on the classic “black widow” subgenre of murder mystery. It’s a lean film, which is a credit in terms of the...
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Rediscover: The Hero
Just as there are countless novels with a writer as the protagonist, the actor and the travails of his profession have been often featured in cinema. From Singin’ in the Rain to Birdman, Hollywood has...
View ArticleSupport the Girls
Andrew Bujalski’s cinema has from the start been predicated on a level of empathy bordering on the sociological, with the director’s sense of observation so keen that he subtly maps out entire systems...
View ArticleThe Wild Boys
The feature-length debut of acclaimed French short film auteur Bertrand Mandico, The Wild Boys feels like the film that would have been made if Lina Wertmüller’s Swept Away had been directed by Dario...
View ArticleOeuvre: Brooks: Robin Hood: Men in Tights
At first glance, the most clever asset of Mel Brooks’ 1993 comedy Robin Hood: Men in Tights is that it is more of a takedown of previous cinematic adaptations of the Robin Hood story rather than a...
View ArticleKin
Kin is a movie that never should have been made. It’s the story of a troubled African-American kid named Eli (Myles Truitt), a 14-year-old who gets into trouble at school and makes some side money...
View ArticleRevisit: Badly Drawn Boy: Have You Fed the Fish?
Badly Drawn Boy, né Damon Gough, is not a name one tends to hear a lot nowadays, but there was a time that he was not only a critical darling, but also something of a household name, especially in his...
View ArticleDestination Wedding
On-screen chemistry between two magnetic leads can overcome a lot in a film, but it can’t mask questionable screenwriting. Putting two uniquely charismatic performers like Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder...
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