I run hot and cold on Danny McBride, in the sense that I run hot and cold on Danny McBride projects. If you wish to contain his brand of gregarious psychopathy, you have to build the right kind of cage for him, otherwise you end up with a Danny McBride performance without a structure to … Continue reading
My rating system has needed work for a good long while; too often I feel like I’m giving films too high a score, and thus giving them a pass on their flaws, when I’m much more mixed on them than the numbers imply. So basically, take my low-ish score on What Keeps You Alive with … Continue reading
Hello! I’m back from vacation. Vacation is why I’m behind on sharing and posting my work. Don’t look at me like that. I’m entitled to go on vacation. Deal with it. Anyways: Here’s Andrei Rublev. There’s a new restoration of Andrei Rublev running in New York City, at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, courtesy of Janus Films. … Continue reading
I don’t think it’s over the line to cite BlacKkKlansman as one of Spike Lee’s best films, and I’m the guy who usually seethes at claims of “masterpiece” directed at movies that haven’t been out in theaters for even a day. Is BlacKkKlansman that? Is it a masterpiece? I’m not sure. Time will tell. But it does stand out … Continue reading
Rachel Dretzin probably didn’t make Far From the Tree anticipating that members of her audience might come back around to Donald Trump mocking a disabled reporter at a campaign rally in 2015 (nice voting, schmucks!). Speaking for myself, that’s exactly what I kept thinking of watching the film (which is based on Andrew Solomon’s non-fiction novel … Continue reading
June has arrived, and also it’s about to end, the month-long worldwide celebrations of my birthday winding down* as I settle into my new age-number and look ahead to the rest of the year**. Thus, this, my Best Things halftime report, expanded once more from merely a ranking of film and TV to include music, … Continue reading
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
For a movie with such a cheery, upbeat title, Let the Sunshine In is determinedly melancholic. Check the director’s name and that makes sense: Claire Denis doesn’t really make straightforwardly upbeat movies, from Trouble Every Day to White Material, so naturally she’d make a romantic comedy dripping in sadness. But it’s a good kind of sadness founded on a real … Continue reading
…so, I probably should have shared this review ahead of this year’s IFFBoston run, because while the review is out of Tribeca, the movie happens to have also played on Thursday night at IFFB. And it’s a pretty good movie. I allude to two other non-traditional docs built on recreation and reenactment, Kate Plays Christine and Nuts!, in my review, but I … Continue reading
Nothing like watching a weird-ass movie adaptation of one of your favorite books that is nigh-unrecognizable from the book, am I right? I doubt Serge Bozon wants me to be mad about Mrs. Hyde; I doubt he made the movie expecting it’d actually make anyone mad. Without a doubt, though, I can say that the movie did … Continue reading
April is such a good month for movies directed by women* that this month, for Paste Magazine‘s Films By Women spotlight, we used three in-theaters movies and only two at-home movies to round out the list. Pretty neat! And those in-theater movies are pretty great, being Zama, Blockers, and You Were Never Really Here, which you already know my … Continue reading
I don’t know of a more elegant way to say this, guys: Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s new movie suuuuuuuuuucks. It gives me literally zero pleasure to call Kings, her interpretation of the events leading into and surrounding the 1992 L.A. riots that erupted after the acquittal of the officers guilty of beating Rodney King, one of the worst … Continue reading
Each year (at least, each year since 2012) I cover Independent Film Festival Boston, I usually do a bit of promotion on this site – previews, lineups, general pleas to the audience to go buy some tickets to the great film festival of my hometown. This year I decided to do all of that over … Continue reading
I’m 33 years old and apparently liking Super Troopers and its sequel, Super Troopers 2, is a sign that I need to evaluate my taste and perhaps take a good, hard look at myself in the mirror. Honestly, it probably does say something about me that I still think dick and fart jokes are funny, but if … Continue reading
Honestly? I can’t imagine a more useless exercise than making an airy biopic, one-part screwball comedy and one-part “great man” drama, about Jean-Luc Fucking Godard, if not because I find him repellent (even though I dig his films), then because Godard would probably definitely find the idea utterly useless. (Note: He called the movie a “stupid, … Continue reading
(Author’s note: I’m trying this new thing where I will attempt to review movies here if I’m on assignment writing about ’em in other capacities elsewhere. So when I interview talent, write editorials, or compose lists, I’ll circle back around to this space for capsule reviews as buttressing corroborative details.) THE MUMMY, 2017, dir. Alex … Continue reading
I’m not at Sundance, but that doesn’t mean I can’t remotely cover Sundance from home! For The Playlist, I reviewed a pretty good documentary called The Workers Cup, about workers building the future stadium for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, and by “building” I mean “kinda being treated as subhuman by their employers in some truly fucked … Continue reading
I watch a lot of movies, and I don’t write about all of them. This is especially true of the annual year-end rush to cram in as much movie watching goodness as possible before voting deadlines for the Boston Online Film Critics Association (BOFCA) and the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS). Consider these capsules my … Continue reading
I’m not a fan of Eli Roth’s 2002 debut, Cabin Fever, so I didn’t expect to walk into the remake, directed by a mysterious man known only as Travis Z., and come out having enjoyed myself. (Note: Travis Z. isn’t mysterious at all. He’s a set designer with credits on awesome stuff like Behind the Mask: The … Continue reading
“There’s nothing wrong with talking to your pets. But if they start talking back, well, that’s a cause for concern. Such is the magical realist scenario director Marjane Satrapi explores in The Voices. Jerry (Ryan Reynolds) is an upbeat and peculiar factory worker who spends his time at home having conversations with his cat, an … Continue reading
A Constant Visual Feast 