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
Watching Nostalgia, I never got a sense of who made it, or even who wrote it; the former is Mark Pellington, the latter is Alex Ross Perry, a guy I don’t associate with mush. But Nostalgia , as you might guess by the title, is all mush. It grossed me out. Okay, it didn’t gross me out, but … Continue reading
Trust me: I really wanted to love Comrade Detective. I’m fond of most of the people involved, and if I’m naturally inclined to consider the basic conceit of dubbing comic vocal tracks over material that is not at all innately comic, I’m okay with it on the off chance that the people doing it nail the … Continue reading
“There’s an art to manipulating a moviegoing audience. Every movie practices this art. Filmmakers have to sculpt their viewers’ responses to their work, even if only to a limited extent; some do it less than others, or perhaps they do such a good job exploiting our emotions that we don’t notice it. Those films function … Continue reading
Casa de mi Padre is remarkably difficult to categorize. On the one hand, it’s eighty minutes of bizarre, absurdist, surrealist humor bent on taking potshots at immeasurably melodramatic telenovelas as well as the works of Sam Peckinpah. On the other, there’s still very little cinema to which it has a direct analogue. Take, for example, Friday’s other … Continue reading
Phil Lord’s and Chris Miller’s genius-level TV-to-movie adaptation, 21 Jump Street, has no right being as good as it is, but it’s easily the best comedy released so far this year and it could well be counted among the top five by the time we’re talking about year-end business. Hill’s in top form here, but Channing … Continue reading
A Constant Visual Feast 