Review

In 1967, Terence Young, director of several 007 movies, gave us Wait Until Dark, in which a blind woman is terrorized in her home by criminals who believe their contraband is hidden there. Its title, a command, refers both to its villains’ nocturnal scheming and to its heroine finding empowerment in her disability.

In 2016, Mike Flanagan, whose Oculus was a modest horror hit, gave us Hush, in which a deaf woman is terrorized in… See more →

In 2013, Edward Snowden provided proof that the American government’s scope of surveillance around the world – including its own citizenry – was even more massive and pernicious than most of us thought. The revelation landed, more or less, with a thud, largely because much of the news media focused more on the size of the leak than the substance of it.

This wasn’t without reason.

With the increasing overreach of the Patriot Act and… See more →

Tonight I saw the actual Misfits play a whole bunch of Misfits songs. My voice may never come back from this one.

I wanted to share with y’all a video of The Hold Steady playing all of Boys and Girls in America front to back, but I was too busy dancing.

Written documentation of last night’s Wolves in the Throne Room fan who solemnly held aloft a single invisible orange for several minutes.

A strange slice of Reagan-era, juvenile delinquent nihilism, River’s Edge feels kind of like the unholy offspring of Stand by Me and Heathers, if said offspring had caught a few scenes of Blue Velvet before his parents sent him to bed. It is less colorful and more uneven than any of those films, stymied by an ill-fitting score and an excess of melodrama. For better or worse, Crispin Glover’s wholly deranged performance, presumably green-screened in… See more →

“Dude, you have orange earplugs! I hate orange. I like green!” says the smiling guy at this show with a novel approach to making friends.

When we see the contrast between the values we share and the realities we live in, that is the fundamental foundation for social change.

If you have a shaky grasp of economics and want to better understand the growing problem of income inequality in the U.S., you probably can’t do much better than Inequality for All, an exhibition of the collected insights of former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. Reich’s affable oratory and knack… See more →

I might have watched this sooner if I had known it was Zack Morris fan fiction.

Come on, Mundruczó, it can’t be that hard to get Baha Men on the phone these days.

1. I was not at all invested in any of the characters (nor did I find the villain even mildly intimidating), despite the fact that they were introduced over thirty years ago in one of my favorite movies. The great J.K. Simmons gives the only enjoyable performance, and it’s wasted on a throwaway character.
2. I usually roll my eyes a bit at nostalgic, anti-CGI Luddites, but this is one of those films that completely validates their… See more →

The offstage moments are flimsy. The onstage moments are unforgettable.

Setting out to portray a bunch of rich, white college athletes as victims, Fantastic Lies is acutely aware that, even with the facts firmly on its side, it has its work cut out for it. It takes great pains to demonstrate Duke University’s socioeconomic contrast with the community it abuts, and the fact that the school’s venerated lacrosse players are no angels. It acknowledges the epidemic of rape on college campuses, and is careful to… See more →

In Hush, Kate Siegel gives a truly terrific performance as an isolated deaf woman targeted by a psychopath. However, said psychopath is just about the least menacing home invader to grace the silver screen since Home Alone. If you really need to see a disabled person being terrorized, your time would be better spent with Wait Until Dark.

As with much of Kirby Dick’s work, The Hunting Ground isn’t necessarily a great documentary in the formal sense, but it is a powerful work of advocacy, equal parts devastating and inspiring.

Midnight Special is a road movie, and the bulk of its story takes place in the rear-view mirror. Who is this kid, and what are the extent and origin of his strange powers? Why are he and his family being relentlessly pursued by a religious cult and the FBI? Where are they going, and why? Amid the frenetic chase, Midnight Special selectively doles out backstory with patient precision, which makes it quite compelling early on,… See more →

On my second viewing of The Witch, I found a lot more to chew on, thanks in large part to the perspective afforded me by Katy Waldman’s analysis in Slate, especially this bit about the ending:

I can’t overstate just how shocking this moment feels, when you realize that the movie has up until now perpetrated a fundamental deception about its own point of view. All along, [director Robert] Eggers has stood on the Devil’s… See more →

As the counterpart to the devastating documentary The Act of Killing, which showcased death squad leaders gleefully dramatizing their unpunished roles in Indonesia’s 1960s genocide, The Look of Silence is less pronounced but more affecting. Focusing this time on the family of one of the estimated one million victims, it follows optometrist Adi Rukun as he calmly confronts his brother’s murderers, who are readily accessible and forthcoming with gory details. While the previous film tangled… See more →

Yuen Woo-ping is a great action choreographer. He is not a great director. Though Michelle Yeoh lends the proceedings gravity merely by showing up, this superfluous sequel is completely absent the poetry of the original.

Suggested alternate title: The Thankless Domesticity.

Props must be given to The Reckless Moment for being one of the rare films of its era to plainly acknowledge the raw deal women get in society. Of course, the film also reinforces said raw deal by billing its chain-smoking heart and soul, Joan Bennett, beneath James Mason, who gives a weak performance to a weaker character. Along with Bennett and the cacophonous existence written for her, Burnett Guffey’s… See more →

I walked into the theater with my skin practically peeled back in invitation, but The Witch just couldn’t quite get under it, and I’m not sure why. The film is exquisitely crafted, with thoughtful attention to period details, desaturated cinematography that is underlit to terrific effect, and a spare, dread-inducing score. The script is an often compelling examination of a deteriorating family, and how communal isolation intensifies the ill effects of religious fervor and gender… See more →

I... don’t know what I was expecting.

Exhaustive and exhausting, Electric Boogaloo’s overview of Cannon Films’ raucous history covers dozens of the production company’s provocative movies with blinding speed. Given that its subject at its peak averaged nearly one film produced per week, the pace is appropriate, and the clips and talking heads all whiz by so fast that reflection yields little more than an admittedly mesmerizing blur of explosions and boobs. Enough sunk in to convince me to revisit Cannon’s… See more →

Animated films aimed at broad audiences rarely take real advantage of the medium’s expressive potential, opting instead for one or another flavor of mannered representationalism. Boy & the World is a delightful exception, channeling the magical realism of a child’s naïve perspective to create a singularly vibrant, rhythmic aesthetic. Both a polemic and an affirmation, the film is occasionally heavy-handed with its politics, but not enough to undermine its core exploration of a generational spectrum… See more →

As successfully as any film I can recall, Carol captures the desperation that accompanies falling in love, and its fuzzy 16 mm rendering gives it the feel of a memory whose potency is undiminished by distance.

As I’ve mentioned before, I am wary of the seductive power of nostalgia. The original Star Wars trilogy loomed so large in my generation’s childhood that any meaningful attempt to revive it was going to be met with uncritical optimism. So as I cheered along with a packed theater on the opening night of The Force Awakens, I remembered that I had done much the same thing sixteen years earlier for The Phantom Menace, which,… See more →

On an emotional level, the aspect of Spotlight that had the biggest impact on me was its journalists’ team dynamic, and the team’s (mostly) unfailing trust in each other to do the job right, even in the middle of the highest-stakes investigation of their careers. In a discussion about the film, this was described with a colloquialism I hadn’t heard before, and which I found too perfect not to make a note of here: competence… See more →

At its best, Ghost in the Shell is a striking exercise in worldbuilding. If they were extended, I could probably watch an hour or two of its atmospheric montages of daily life in Hong Kong’s near future, whose sights and sounds are at once dreamlike and palpable. But as an exercise in storytelling, it’s disappointing that a film with such strong visuals and interesting ideas relies almost entirely on dialogue for its expository and thematic… See more →

It’s been a shitty week, but luckily @lowtheband came to town tonight to wash off the muck.

As Mondays go, it turns out that the one where you get to see a free, surprise Stevie Wonder show is a winner.

1. How old is the youngest person alive who unironically uses the phrase “making love?”
2. How old is the youngest Richard alive who consents to being called Dick?
3. Is Rob Gordon velumiphobic?

As an indictment of our news media’s bloodlust and its complicity in racist fear mongering, the machinations of Nightcrawler’s Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Nina Romina (Rene Russo) have the depth and subtlety of a Chick tract. Their unashamed “if it bleeds, it leads” philosophy is transparently arranged for maximum repugnance*, presumably with the intention of ironically using TV journalism’s own brand of reductive alarmism against it. But the staging of their discussions makes… See more →

The Damned is an odd crossbreed of outlaw biker film, love story, and atomic-age science fiction, and this unlikely amalgam allows the film to give equal time to several of the Western Bloc’s competing attitudes about the Cold War era.

In the idyllic seaside town of Weymouth, King (Oliver Reed) and his gang of delinquents, The Teddy Boys, spend their days terrorizing tourists. After becoming one of the gang’s victims, the affluent Simon (MacDonald Carey)… See more →

I think it’s fair to say that Faith No More had run its course by the time the band split up in 1998, and seventeen years later, Sol Invictus finds the guys pretty much picking up right where they left off, which renders the album sadly inessential. This is not to say that it’s bad, especially by reunion record standards, but none of its songs are likely to become classics, and some probably should have… See more →

Color me impressed that @ChamberMonster managed to keep a secret for 2+ months, and tonight we’re seeing Stephin Merritt!

After being a Wussy fan for a few years, I only just now noticed that this song borrows liberally from the Undertones’ “Teenage Kicks.”

Though a few good bands are included, no one on this compilation does an even remotely compelling Nirvana cover.

I haven’t heard or thought much about this album in probably at least fifteen years. Apropos of nothing, several songs from it have been getting stuck in my head lately, and it’s very confusing.

I never expected to get so much enjoyment from something that reminds me of Sheryl Crow.

What a difference a shift in perspective makes. David Robert Mitchell’s directorial debut, The Myth of the American Sleepover, was a pensive coming-of-age drama that showed promise but was ultimately defeated by its own one-note sotto voce. With It Follows, Mitchell takes on the same themes much more successfully by funneling them through a simple but ingenious horror premise: the carrier of a sexually-transmitted curse is slowly but relentlessly pursued by a malevolent, shape-shifting being… See more →

Needs more cowbell.

The original Uncle Buck is still the best, but this is a really fun remake.

A lot of Assault on Precinct 13’s potential appeal rides on its antihero, Napoleon Wilson (Darwin Joston), but the character just doesn’t get there. All of his sardonic one-liners are limp punch lines in search of a joke, and Joston’s portrayal of him as a notorious, cavalier killer is bland and ineffectual, completely absent the menace he is presumed to possess.

A caricature of creativity.

The three things I find most interesting about Breakfast at Tiffany’s:

1. Made in 1961 at the tail end of the Production Code era, it is fascinating to see the film tiptoe around the fact that its two main characters are essentially prostitutes.
2. Even if one forgives its gobsmacking racism, I can’t begin to imagine how Mickey Rooney’s way-over-the-top slapstick could have been deemed fit for inclusion in this or any other film made for adults.
3. The… See more →

This superfluous sequel to The Trip is distinguished from its predecessor in two ways: 1) The titular road trip swaps northern England for Italy, and 2) Rob Brydon tries his hand at the mid-life crisis Steve Coogan had in the first film. Otherwise, The Trip to Italy is more of the same, and I do mean more. Remember all those celebrity impressions? They were funny, right? Here they are again, seemingly sans editing, driven far… See more →

My five favorite films of 2014, in alphabetical order.

Boyhood

Richard Linklater

In less skilled hands, Boyhood’s twelve years in production might not have amounted to much more than a (very ambitious) stunt, but instead, Richard Linklater’s landmark coming-of-age opus is accessible without being straightforward, and thoughtful without being ponderous. Its 165 minutes are breezy and unrushed, and yet it is over before you know it. I guess kids really do grow up fast.… See more →

There are many enjoyable moments in Inherent Vice’s drug-addled noir, most of them occurring between Joaquin Phoenix’s hippie P.I. and Josh Brolin’s crooked cop. As a whole, though, the stupor the audience is made to share with the protagonist renders the intricacies of the hardboiled plot largely impenetrable. That bewildering effect is fitting but unsatisfying.

Last month I described Birdman – unfavorably – as a “series of carefully scripted temper tantrums meant to embody the struggle of making capital ‘A’ Art.” I wouldn’t have guessed that a short time later, another film fitting that description would knock me on my ass.

Whiplash is a trenchant examination of greatness, approaching the idea not by deconstructing a success story, but instead by observing an integral moment in the life of someone who … See more →