I really liked Swiss Army Man, but I didn’t get a chance to write about it when it was running around in theaters back in June. So now that it’s out on Blu-ray, I figured, hey: I already have a free review copy of the film, why not put down some virtual ink on it? So … Continue reading
“Don’t let the title of Paolo Sorrentino’s new film fool you: he’s playing coy.Youth is not about young people at all, but rather a pair of sad old wrinklies who sit around at a spa mourning the loss of their youth, as well as the divisions between parents and their children, the death of the … Continue reading
In a two hour movie brimming with finely calibrated, impeccably composed images that capture the brutal realities of America’s antebellum slave culture, a single shot of our nation’s looming capitol proves the most provocative. 12 Years a Slave, for all of its remarkable qualities, should be identified most of all as the rare movie that … Continue reading
The follow-up film from Little Miss Sunshine directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris is a big step forward from their 2006 indie darling, but the film’s true architect seems to be its screenwriter, Zoe Kazan, telling a story of gender politics and male wish fulfillment in the Match.com era. And it’s pretty great. Continue reading
It’s amazing that in a single year we saw the release of four alien invasion films, and of that quartet only one turned out to be any good. How do three different directors miss the mark making variations on the same type of movie? Being kind, Super 8 only falls off the rails in its last … Continue reading
Meek’s Cutoff feels something like an oddity in the western genre, and I mean that in the best way possible. There’s no denying the western influences clearly embedded in its cinematic DNA; Kelly Reichardt’s fourth feature very much draws from that celluloid tradition, but she’s not telling a story about cowboys and Indians or marshals … Continue reading
A Constant Visual Feast 