Tigers Are Not Afraid
Tigers Are Not Afraid, a Mexican horror film in the vein of Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth, is equal parts fantastical and gut-wrenching. Written and directed by Issa...
View ArticleHoly Hell! Girl, Interrupted Turns 20
This is a strange time to be alive; the last few years seem to have left most people bewildered, tired, enraged, afraid to turn on the news or all of the above. As someone who didn’t live through the...
View ArticleOeuvre: Varda: Murals Murals
Murals Murals embodies all that makes Agnés Varda such a singular and masterful filmmaker, demonstrating her warm humanism, her unceasing curiosity and her unerring aesthetic instincts. The 1982...
View ArticleAngel Has Fallen
The unlikely Has Fallen franchise, a series of films starring Gerard Butler as near-superhuman Secret Service agent Mike Banning, have thus far been jingoistic throwbacks whose lack of depth or flair...
View ArticleVita and Virginia
The first rule of acceptance when viewing biopics must be that they are all fan fiction, a truth that Vita and Virginia, directed by Chanya Button, relishes. The film tells the story of the romance...
View ArticleJacob’s Ladder
Ideally, remaking a film is an opportunity to 1) improve upon imperfect material, 2) recontextualize the source through a new perspective or 3) trap new audiences into falling for the same trick twice....
View ArticleRevisit: Fantasia
Has pure art and popular culture merged so completely, so uniquely and so beautifully on the silver screen since Walt Disney unleashed Fantasia in 1940? If there’s a better example, point me to it....
View ArticleGenesis
Canadian director Philippe Lesage follows up 2015’s autobiographical The Demons with Genesis, the second part of the writer-director’s coming-of-age diptych. Much more developed in the sense of a...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Hagazussa: A Heathen’s Curse
Hiding in the depths of the horror streaming service Shudder is a creepy little tale of witchcraft that deserves attention. Hagazussa: A Heathen’s Curse, from Austrian writer-director Lukas Feigelfeld,...
View ArticleGive Me Liberty
Vic (Chris Galust) is having a bad day. But then again, Give Me Liberty makes it clear that every day in Vic’s life as a medical transport travel is stressful. Director Kirill Mikhanosvky hits the...
View ArticleOeuvre: Varda: Documenteur
When watching Documenteur, it is readily apparent that the film was made more or less simultaneously with Varda’s previous film, Murals Murals. Both are set in late-‘70s Los Angeles, both feature...
View ArticleAquarela
When we’ve finally pushed the Earth to its limits, Mother Nature will have her revenge. Aquarela proves there is nothing quite as powerful as water. When the great civilizations crumble away, it will...
View ArticleAga
In one of the first shots of Milko Lazarov’s Aga, the camera holds on a snowy, white expanse, but its scale is impossible to parse. It could be a particularly cloudy sky, or a wintry lawn viewed...
View ArticleThe Load
The paradox of postmodernity can be described as something like this: we are a generation of forever-war—in fact, college freshmen swarming university campuses across the US have never lived in a...
View ArticleOfficial Secrets
Just in case the opening moments of Gavin Hood’s Official Secrets don’t immediately telegraph the relevance of its domesticated spy-fi drama, he inserts a well-timed “based on actual events” card...
View ArticleOeuvre: Varda: Vagabond
Like Sunset Boulevard, Vagabond begins at the end. Its idyllic opening shot, gazing at a farm with two trees swaying in the foreground and two more rising at the top of a hill in the distance,...
View ArticleBrittany Runs a Marathon
Brittany Runs a Marathon nails something very few films get; it delivers the goods of classic comedy while also addressing the concerns of our current times. It’s often hard to make life seem funny...
View ArticleIt Chapter Two
It Chapter Two has a nifty little sequence in its early scenes, one which finds its protagonists gathered at a Chinese restaurant 27 years after the events that transpired in this horror story’s...
View ArticleEdie
“It’s never too late.” When the slogan from Edie’s poster is spoken on screen, it’s the cook at the main character’s favorite restaurant who says it, assuring her it’s never too late in the day to...
View ArticleMs. Purple
The latest film from talented director (and Twilight saga actor) Justin Chon, Ms. Purple is slow-moving. But Chon, who co-wrote with Chris Dinh, uses that slow pace to fully explore his characters and...
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