A review requested by Bryan C, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. If there’s one big, unanswerable complaint to be made against Wong Kar-wai’s 1997 romantic tragedy Happy Together, it’s that three years later, Wong made In the Mood for Love, and in the process made the earlier […]
A review requested by Sara L, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. Anthology films are always a shaky prospect, but they don’t come more clear-cut and solid in conception than Memories, a 1995 animated film in three parts. It is nothing more complex than an adaptation of three […]
A review requested by Jenny B, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. I have been guilty of this sin as recently as in the middle of re-watching the film for this review, but I think I can still say without hesitation: it’s much, much too easy to overlook […]
A review requested by Shoumik H, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. Johnnie To is a name that you might know, and you definitely should. He is nothing less than the finest director of action movies and crime thrillers in Hong Kong since that country’s action cinema wave […]
Clouds of Sils Maria is essentially three different films, and each one in order is a little bit less interesting. But for a while there, for maybe the first 25 minutes or so, it seems that Olivier Assayas has done it again, knocking out a fascinating character study of life in a constantly plugged-in, celebrity-addicted […]
A review requested by Zev Burrows, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. It’s a bit tricky to decide exactly what to do with The Natural, a 1984 film that’s good in almost every possible way, including some ways that a movie of its genre – the Inspirational Period […]
A review requested by Matthew Blackwell, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. One doesn’t get too many chances to write about the reigning Best Movie Ever Made, as 1958’s Vertigo was anointed by the 2012 Sight & Sound critics’ poll, the closest thing we have to the official […]
Those of us who love the Fast & Furious franchise for its gonzo refusal to commit to any kind of rational naming convention have a new reason to be happy: the follow-up to the film officially titled Fast & Furious 6, but identified Furious 6 onscreen, has been advertised as Furious 7, but in the […]
A review requested by Andrew Johnson, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny isn’t an inexplicable movie. Hell, I’m about to explicate it here in just a moment. But it’s exactly the kind of movie that feels inexplicable, colliding random nonsense in […]
A review requested by Cammy, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. High Fidelity is a movie that sounds on paper like it should be an obnoxious slog in the company of obnoxious men whose sense of sexual entitlement is treated with the utmost admiration and gravity, and I […]
A review requested by Chris W, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. Out of the Past is not the best film noir ever made, nor does it necessarily include everything that makes the genre its beautifully toxic best self (there’s a distinct lack of urban rot, which I […]
