“The Reinvention of Aubrey Plaza”

But first, she had to be invented. Continue reading →

“Alex de la Iglesia’s ‘The Day of the Beast’ and ‘Perdita Durango’ Helped Define a Director with Mid-’90s Madness”

I would say “never change, Álex de la Iglesia,” but honestly, it’s been over 20 years and he definitely has not. It’s a good thing! Continue reading →

“‘The Last Days of American Crime’ Is A Terrible Movie Released At The Worst Possible Time “

If you ever find a Netflix movie you’ve never heard of while scrolling for something to watch, my advice is this: There’s a reason you couldn’t find it. Continue reading →

“S. Craig Zahler On ‘Dragged Across Concrete,’ Casting Mel Gibson, His Writing Process And More”

Andy tries to get an honest answer out of a filmmaker about the perils of casting a controversial figure in their movie, and he is sort of embarrassed for it. Continue reading →

Review: The Standoff at Sparrow Creek, 2019, dir. Henry Dunham

Seven men. Six innocent. One guilty. One location. One night to sort it all out. One really long movie title. But hey, it gets the point across! Continue reading →

“Robert Redford’s Last Role Is A Dazzling Film With A Simple Message: Do What Makes You Happy”

Minor note about The Old Man & the Gun: As of now, David Lowery is 2 for 4 with me, having won me over with Pete’s Dragon and lost me on both Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and A Ghost Story*. The Old Man & the Gun reads like a snow globe, a capsule containing every sort of movie Lowery grew … Continue reading →

Review: American Animals, 2018, dir. Bart Layton

Days after my review of Bart Layton’s American Animals published at Paste Magazine, I’m starting to wonder if I had problems with the film based on what I thought it should be rather than what it actually is.  Yeah, yeah: Sounds like a bunch of hand-wringing movie critic anxiety over nothing. American Animals tells the story of four … Continue reading →

“The Young Director Who Keeps Getting Compared to Quentin Tarantino”

Anytime a director takes a really worn-out formula or structure and freshens it up is a good time (more often than not). So Lowlife, a movie where a man in a luchador mask roughs people up for a sex trafficking, organ snatching sicko, is my kind of a thing, a clear descendant of the grimy, violent … Continue reading →

Review: Have a Nice Day, 2018, dir. Liu Jian

File Have a Nice Day under the “movies that I wish I liked more” tab in the file cabinet containing every review I’ve ever written. (Note: I don’t actually have a file cabinet. It’s a metaphor. Work with me here.) Honestly, if this film’s animation scheme actually embraced movement and didn’t feel so fucking stiff, I’d … Continue reading →

Review: Small Town Crime, 2018, dir. Eshom Nelms & Ian Nelms

It’s been a while since I saw the Nelms brothers’ Small Town Crime, and it’s also been a while since I wrote up my review for Paste Magazine (which you can now read ’til the cows come home, if that’s your idea of a good time), and I’ve come closer to nailing down what it is about … Continue reading →

Review: Three, 2016, dir. Johnnie To

When you’re a master, you can get away with making “minor” movies because your status turns “minor” movies into “major” movies. Three isn’t the best To we’ve gotten in the last few years – that would be 2013’s stunning Drug War – but it’s still outstanding, an eighty or so minute masterclass in what a seasoned director … Continue reading →

Review: Mojave, 2016, dir. William Monahan

“This has been a good month for moviegoers craving celebrations of machismo. First, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s desperately masculine, Oscar-nominated The Revenant went wide. Then, Michael Bay’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi opened and fizzled in the same weekend. Now, The Departed screenwriter William Monahan’s second directorial effort, Mojave, joins the fray with a … Continue reading →

Review: Band of Robbers, 2016, dir. Aaron Nee & Adam Nee

“When Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn back in 1884, he prefaced the novel with a wry warning: “Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.” This … Continue reading →

Review: Moonwalkers, 2016, dir. Antoine Bardou-Jacquet

“Ron Perlman’s performance in Antoine Bardou-Jacquet’s Moonwalkers is the film’s best recommendation. It is also the only recommendation, for the most part, because for all of the great violence on display, there’s not a whole lot hanging the production together. Screenwriter Dean Craig’s script is the rubber and Perlman is the glue. Nothing sticks here … Continue reading →

Review: Black Mass, 2015, dir. Scott Cooper

“James “Whitey” Bulger terrorized Boston as the boss of the Winter Hill Gang from the 1970s until the 1990s, went into hiding in 1994, fell into FBI custody in 2011, and now, thanks to filmmaker Scott Cooper, he’s stalking multiplexes in the gangster film Black Mass. For Cooper, the movie marks his third plum gig … Continue reading →

Go, See, Talk! Review: Pusher, 2012, dir. Luis Prieto

If anything, Pusher is a perfect example of what a remake both should and should not be; it’s well-made and engaging, but it also brings nothing new to a story we’ve already seen before. Continue reading →

The Criterion Files: Bicycle Thieves/Gomorrah (pt. 2)

It’s taken me some time, but I finally have the second half of the most recent Criterion Files installment for you to peruse. I realize we’re well outside the week and a half timeline I hinted at in the first part, but by now you should all know me well enough to not take my … Continue reading →

The Criterion Files: Bicycle Thieves/Gomorrah (pt.1)

I’m going to do something a little bit different with this week’s Criterion File– I’m splitting it up into two segments. Why? Simple: the two films I selected for this installment both gave me an enormous amount to talk about, and not just on individual levels, or within the context of themselves, either. On the … Continue reading →

The Criterion Files: Le Doulos/Shoot the Piano Player

We’re back with another installment of The Criterion Files– this time with a double feature of the French persuasion. Three entries and six films in, this is still the first File to touch on the many numerous and great French filmmakers championed by the Criterion collection (and, as an aside, French films do seem to … Continue reading →

Review: Bronson, 2008, dir. Nicholas Winding Refn

You’ve probably never heard of Charles Bronson– not the real Charles Bronson, but rather Michael Peterson, who adopted the name of the famous action icon on the advice of his fighting promoter as a way of inflating his own icon and bolstering his status as a man not to be trifled with. His story is … Continue reading →