“George Clooney’s Sentimentality Can’t Prop Up ‘The Tender Bar'”

The tender blah. Continue reading →

Review: Detour, 2017, dir. Christopher Smith

I reviewed Christopher Smith’s Black Death on this very site six years ago, and so it was something of a pleasure to review his latest, Detour, even if I’m still murky on whether or not I think Detour is good. I liked it. I liked the film’s central gimmick, in which two narratives unfold representing the consequences of … Continue reading →

Review: Entertainment, 2015, dir. Rick Alverson

“Rick Alverson’s Entertainment is best described as a case of willfully false advertising. “Entertainment,” to Alverson, is an invocation of abject human misery rather than a promise of amusement and delight. His film offers neither pleasure nor diversion—instead, it spiritually brutalizes its viewers with a portrait of one comedian’s professional struggles on a road trip … Continue reading →