“Get Ghosted By Pete Ohs’ ‘Jethica'”

When in doubt, and when in a pandemic, drive to the middle of nowhere and shoot a ghost story movie about isolated people. Continue reading →

“‘The African Desperate’ Is a Composed, Critical Examination of Race”

Deceit in advertising! This movie is not desperate at all. It is in fact shockingly well-poised. Continue reading →

“‘Strawberry Mansion’ Review: The Best Sci-Fi Love Story Since ‘Eternal Sunshine'”

I don’t always write my own headlines, and when I do, I usually say: Take it well-salted. A headline is supposed to be a little clicky. In this case, though, I think I agree, but it’s been so long since Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind that I can’t say for sure. Still: It’s a reasonable … Continue reading →

“‘Anne at 13,000 Ft.’s Plummeting Breakdown Might Rob You of Breath

13,000 is, and I’m getting really technical here, a whole lot of goddamn feet to be at. Continue reading →

“‘How It Ends’ Can’t End Soon Enough”

God grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change, but also please, PLEASE explain to me why people still make movies like this one. Continue reading →

“‘Love Spreads’: Eiza González & Alia Shawkat Consider What’s Worth Sacrificing To Make A Great Album”

Like strawberry jam. Or Nutella. Or in some cases a plague. There’s so much love here, and it’s catching. Continue reading →

“‘The Killing of Two Lovers’ Shoots Its Hollow Heartbreak Beautifully”

Hang on a second there – two lovers? In THIS ec– Continue reading →

Review: Eighth Grade, 2018, dir. Bo Burnham

“Hey,” says the movie, “let’s all go back in time to our adolescence, when our skin resembled pizza bathed in grease and battered with a meat hammer, and everything we liked actually in retrospect really, really sucks, and social interaction felt as risky as giving yourself a half dozen paper cuts and sticking your limbs … Continue reading →

“In ‘Damsel,’ It’s The Men Who Are In Distress”

In retrospect, this piece I wrote about Damsel for The Week might be a little unkind to poor Parson Henry; he is indeed pathetic, and he is in distress, but he’s genuine and honest and frankly every other character in the film takes advantage of him or otherwise abuses him without thinking twice about it. It’s nigh-impossible … Continue reading →

Review: Hearts Beat Loud, 2018, dir. Brett Haley

For clarity’s sake, all of the things I say about Brett Haley in the intro to my review of his latest, Hearts Beat Loud, is absolutely true: I’ve never spoken to him one on one, but I have seen him speak, twice, two years in a row, at Independent Film Festival Boston, where in both appearances he … 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: Pet Names, 2018, dir. Carol Brandt

If you don’t listen closely enough, you might miss the quiet explanation for Pet Names‘ title, but that’s okay: You’re almost guaranteed to catch it. Pet Names is a tiny movie about tiny problems, but it’s beautifully made and completely engrossing; I can’t imagine anyone with a taste for this kind of cinema, character-driven, relationship-driven, unfussed and … Continue reading →

Review Round-Up: A Bad Batch Of Small Crimes In Little Boxes

(What do any of these movies have in common with each other? Little and less, but maybe you can draw some links from one to the other to the third, especially between the first and the last in the round-up. Or maybe not. There’s not much that gooey indie dramedies, harsh crime stories, and acid-trip … Continue reading →

Review: Weirdos, 2017, dir. Bruce McDonald

And here I go, festing yet again! This time I’m remotely reviewing a title that played at this year’s Berlinale (also known as the Berlin International Film Festival), Weirdos, directed by Bruce McDonald, who is probably best liked for his 2009 horror film Pontypool. Weirdos isn’t Pontypool by a damn sight, either in terms of content or in … Continue reading →

Review: Moonlight, 2016, dir. Barry Jenkins

I’ve not yet stumbled upon a review of Moonlight that has found a way to associate the film’s message with the central philosophies of the Black Lives Matter movement, mostly because that movement is not germane to the film’s messages and because, I suspect, any white author writing about Barry Jenkins’ extraordinary second feature is smart … Continue reading →

Review: Blue Jay, 2016, dir. Alex Lehmann

Proof that Sarah Paulson is the best: She coaxes a great performance out of Mark Duplass in Blue Jay, this wonderful, itty bitty widdle indie moobie that you can rent or buy in iTunes. I think you should! I obviously liked it, judging by the review I wrote for Paste Magazine, and you know that that’s … Continue reading →

Review: Goat, 2016, dir. Andrew Neel

I can picture a cut of Goat that leaves out the extraneous stuff, the stuff that has net zero impact on the plot, and I can also picture that cut of Goat being much, much better than the cut we got. Oh well. The cut we got is still pretty solid, excess material aside. Goat, by the way, … Continue reading →

Review: White Girl, 2016, dir. Elizabeth Wood

Elizabeth Wood’s White Girl is not a movie for the prude or the faint of heart. You can tell that by looking at its poster, which features the white girl of the title having sex with her drug dealing boyfriend. (Spoiler alert!) There’s more where that came from (zing!), though, lots more, and much of it … Continue reading →

Interview: Ira Sachs, “Little Men”

I didn’t put Ira Sachs’ Little Men on my top ten of the year thus far list, but if I’d revisited it before seeing Mike Birbiglia’s Don’t Think Twice, it might have ended up at least in the ten slot, and possibly higher. It’s one of the films in 2016 that comes as close to perfect as possible, … Continue reading →

Interview: Anna Rose Holmer, “The Fits”

My love for Ann Rose Holmer’s extraordinary debut, The Fits, is well documented as of my report from Independent Film Festival Boston. So naturally, I took the opportunity to chat with her about the film as the greatest of honors. I won’t bore you with a lead-in. This is one of my favorite interviews that I’ve done … Continue reading →