Transit
A mystery that’s persistently dedicated to leaving its riddles unsolved, Christian Petzold’s Transit opens in ambiguity. Employing a Francophone setting that might just as easily be North Africa as...
View ArticleLevel 16
If you’re a fan of feminist dystopia with sinister undertones, you’re in luck. Level 16, directed by Danishka Esterhazy, doesn’t quite reach for the worldwide scope of some of its contemporaries,...
View ArticleRediscover: Murderers Among Us
In the aftermath of World War II, cinematic culture approached the resulting wreckage from a variety of angles, most prominently via films noir, European post-mortem documentaries and neo-realist...
View ArticleThe Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
Long-lauded for the distinct humanism found in his work as a performer, critically acclaimed actor Chiwetel Ejiofor brings that same sincerity to his directorial debut, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind....
View ArticleWoman at War
Being a person in 2019 is hard. Not, for most of us, in the material sense: push-button interior climate control, motorized travel and the ability to trade dollars rather than labor hours for meeting...
View ArticleGiant Little Ones
Due to technical difficulties, I’ve seen Giant Little Ones, front to back, three times now. At first, I was underwhelmed. After a revisit, my opinion improved. By the third viewing, I fully turned a...
View ArticleFurie
There probably won’t be another Liam Neeson Taken joint, for a number of reasons. But the high-pitched kidnaping trilogy tapped a potent if at times irrational vein of revenge that’s evergreen and...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Dogma Turns 20
So much time has passed since he released a halfway decent movie that it’s easy to forget Kevin Smith wasn’t always a glorified podcaster and persistent comic-convention ghoul. In the mid to late ‘90s,...
View ArticleOeuvre: Carpenter: Christine
Outside of his undeniable classics, John Carpenter’s work brings up memories of late night hunts on cable TV during the dark days of hopping a mere 30 channels with a controller attached to your...
View ArticleClimax
Gaspar Noé’s Climax begins with videotaped interviews of the cast members, and these are shown playing on a television surrounded by books and videotapes. The materials blatantly display Noé’s...
View ArticleCaptain Marvel
Everyone’s going to be talking about Captain Marvel for the next few weeks, as it’s inarguably the biggest film being released in the world, but precious little of that chatter is going to be about the...
View ArticleI’m Not Here
A grizzled, barely-clothed J.K. Simmons mopes around a squalid dwelling, drinks copiously and picks up random stuff. Nearly each object that Simmons’ Steve touches evokes a vivid flashback to his...
View ArticleThe Kid
Not to skew historic here, but in thinking about movie Westerns it’s difficult not to go backward. For one, the genre’s time period is, of course, at a sizable remove from our present. There are no...
View Article3 Faces
With his fourth completed and globally distributed film while ostensibly under a 20-year filmmaking ban by the Iranian government, it finally feels at least somewhat safe to say that Jafar Panahi is...
View ArticleRediscover: The Addiction
One of the most pervasive and tedious tropes in cinema is the notion that New York City serves as a “character” in nearly any film shot there, that the mere act of documenting action on its streets...
View ArticleBlack Mother
The Caribbean has long been at the center of anti-colonial, postcolonial and decolonial thinking and experimentation (see, among dozens of others, philosophers as diverse in medium and message as...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Camino
For all the evil Jeff Bezos has brought into the world, Amazon’s Prime Video service has become a neat little haven for oddball indie curios the likes of which Netflix or Hulu would bury beneath piles...
View ArticleStarfish
It’s difficult to watch a film that doesn’t stick the landing despite everyone giving it their all. Writer/director A.T. White’s debut, Starfish, is a passionate work full of potential and heart, but...
View ArticleOeuvre: Carpenter: Starman
“I can’t get nooo… satisfaction” rips through the landscape of space, filling the deep blackness with echoes of the Rolling Stones. We’re only moments into John Carpenter’s Starman and the director has...
View ArticleWonder Park
Conquering the anxieties of the real world with the profound education of imagination is a common theme in the realm of animated films. Wonder Park, the latest from Paramount Animation (whose credits...
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