Every so often, I watch a movie for review, I like it, and as much as I can articulate the things I like about it, I…can’t articulate a fucking thing about why I like it, or what it means on a cultural or even just a niche level. That’s my experience with Marianna Palka’s new film, Bitch, … Continue reading
I won’t lie to you, folks: I really enjoyed speaking to Steven Yeun, best known to most as Glenn on The Walking Dead, a show I gave up on a long, long time ago but bitterly missed because, among other things, Yeun is awesome. But fear not! He’s doing a-okay post-TWD, thanks to roles in movies … Continue reading
I hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated, hated Tragedy Girls. If it had any balls, I would kick them for a whole day, except that if it had any balls it’d be a much better movie, and so … Continue reading
It might not be obvious based on my interview with Ruben Östlund – I try to keep it professional – but I dug The Square. I dug it so much that I wrote a review about it to pair with the interview. No preamble. Just a link. It’s over at Paste Magazine. Do your thing.
Speaking to a filmmaker for the second time about their work is always a strange-ish experience, one that I lived through earlier this year with Trey Edward Shults, but I’m not really going to complain about getting to chat up artists like Shults and Sean Baker twice. You might remember that I talked to Baker back … Continue reading
It only occurred to me recently that I never did any writing about Force Majeure, that delightfully gelid, darkly comic Swedish parody of manhood; it’s a great film, as in truly great, as in not just “better than good” but “outstanding.” (So I guess it’s an outstanding film. Look, shut up.) Anyways: This occurred to me leading … Continue reading
2017 has visited a flood of Stephen King adaptations upon us, most of them good (It! Gerald’s Game!), one of them less so (you can connect the dots from here!). Now we’ve got 1922 on our hands courtesy of those wacky non-advertising types over at Netflix. It’s good! It’s really good, in fact! It might be the … Continue reading
We turn to movies, more often than not, for escape and distraction, for the promise of having our woes assuaged, if only for a couple of hours, in the calming glow of the silver screen (whether in large or small formats). Occasionally, though, the movies deny us, as in Angels Wear White, the new film by … Continue reading
Everyone knows that I hated, hated, hated Roland Emmerich’s Stonewall. What my take on David France’s new film, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, presupposes is that, maybe you shouldn’t make terrible biopics about real-life events while supplanting the real-life struggling minorities at their center with clean-cut white boys? …so, yeah, I guess that doesn’t … Continue reading
And just in time for the scariest month on the calendar (save for November during fucking election years): This new, shiny piece I’ve got up at The Hollywood Reporter (which, being a few days old, no longer quite qualifies as either “new” or “shiny,” but shaddup), about Mike Flanagan and his new film, Gerald’s Game. If you’re … Continue reading
If you want an unbiased take on Taron Lexton’s In Search of Fellini, look elsewhere than here (or my review, up at Paste Magazine); I am forever and always a lover of all things related to the great master of Italian cinema, so if you make a movie wrapped around an abiding passion for him, I’m … Continue reading
I hated Patriots Day so much that I was taken off guard by how much I liked Stronger, David Gordon Green’s own attempt at tackling the events of the Boston Marathon bombing on screen; narrowing that down further, I was taken off guard by how critical Green’s film is about the response to the bombing, or a subsection … Continue reading
Casting people of colors in roles that demand they speak in regional accents they don’t have is insulting, but what if – what if – a movie directed by an Indian-American woman (Lena Khan!) cast an Indian-American actor (Danny Pudi!) as a guy from India and thus required him to adopt an Indian accent? I’m not sure … Continue reading
I’m on board for any kind of atmospheric Gothic guignol, so The Limehouse Golem is right in my wheelhouse. Everyone knows that Jack the Ripper was the most prolific serial killer of his day; what this film presupposes is, what if he wasn’t? That’s a campy enough premise to work off of, and if I’m being … Continue reading
I’m of the mind that we’re all animal lovers, even those of us who include animals in our diet, whether in the form of products derived from, say, their milk (like cheese) or in the form of their meat. So it stands to reason that we’re all going to get something from watching Shaul Schwarz … Continue reading
I think we’re going to see a lot of people making movies on iPhones, or I guess I should say a lot more people; it’s not like Sean Baker, the brilliant Sean Baker, he of Tangerine, and Starlet, and Prince of Broadway, is the first filmmaker to think of using a mobile device to shoot a movie, but I doubt … Continue reading
If you know me, you know that unchecked and irrational nostalgia for the 1980s, whether in real life or in film or in television or literally frigging anything, makes me want to hurl. So imagine my delight to find that It doesn’t indulge in nostalgia; it just reroots the King story in the 1980s, with only … Continue reading
I suspect most will find 1% entertaining enough that my remote TIFF review of the film (so called because I reviewed the film in Boston and not on-location at TIFF) will strike some as maybe a little bit unfair or even a bit pretentious. Well…you’re wrong! It’s neither of these things. If anything, I’m just being … Continue reading
I rather liked Lake Bell’s first go behind the camera, In a World…, so maybe I put higher expectations on her second, I Do…Until I Don’t than I ought to have. I didn’t hate it; I didn’t even dislike it. But it’s a step back, in a sense, from In a World…, less polished, less successful as a narrative, … Continue reading
Sick of hearing me talk about Lemon? Tough noogies: Here’s more of me talking about Lemon, this time in conversation with Janicza Bravo and Brett Gelman. Bravo directed the thing; Gelman starred in the thing; they both wrote the thing together. It’s a good thing! (The movie, I mean. The interview is a good thing, too, though, … Continue reading
A Constant Visual Feast 