The development of film noir, the not-quite-a-genre that wouldn’t be named until after the fact, but which dominated American genre filmmaking in the 15 years after World War II, snakes this way and that, constantly churning and turning out new variations on a theme. But it’s still possible to pin it down on a map […]
Two’s not enough for a trend, but I think it’s terribly fascinating that 2015’s two best cinematic love stories were both directed by gay men, are both not about gay men, but are both nonetheless depictions of modes of sexual and romantic desire that tend to be marginalised in mainstream society. Todd Haynes graced us […]
Carol‘s opening shot is, while probably not the “best” of 2015, is at any rate one that lays out the tenor of the film to come to best effect. There’s a curlicue pattern in metal, almost Art Deco, if not for the dull color, and the camera lingers on it to allow us to appreciate […]
This review is based on the most commonly-available copy recorded from the broadcast by the CBS affiliate in Baltimore, MD, with all commercial breaks intact. When we began our little retrospective of the Star Wars franchise, I asked you to do something unfathomably difficult, and pretend that it was 1977, and you just saw Star […]
I don’t know when the statute of limitations for spoilers runs out on a movie that makes crazy-ass wackyland fantasy amount of money in its first weekend, but I do know that the internet is full of geeks, and there are are almost surely literally hundreds of reviews of Star Wars: The Force Awakens that […]
This review is based on the 2011 Blu-ray, a version that is different from the theatrical release in the form of one minor scene extended by a couple of lines of dialogue, and a redone visual effect. The consensus of opinion has been that Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith is the […]
Something feels distinctly not right about having one’s response to a documentary study about the grotesque abuses made by the FBI in pursuing potential terror suspects be that it feels like a great ’70s paranoia thriller, but I think that (T)error understands that there’s something feistier going on than just cataloging the moral depravity of […]
If I describe Brooklyn as the nicest movie to take your grandma to over the holidays, hopefully that implies two things. One of them, of course, is that the film has been carefully buffed and sanded by director John Crowley and screenwriter Nick Hornby (adapting a novel by Colm Tóibín) to make certain that it […]
The last films of great directors inherently come with an unfair amount of baggage, and the notion that the late Albert Maysles – who, with his even later brother David, did much to help define the new genre of documentary film known as direct cinema in the ’60s – would end his career with a […]
It’s lazy criticism, but sometimes it really is that hard to figure out who in the hell they thought a movie was made for. Why, in 2015, a Goosebumps movie? Is it for nostalgic 20-but-closing-on-30somethings? The 10 and 12-year-olds of today? Some unsustainable hybrid of the both of them? But even that’s missing the forest […]
Dress a punishing Austrian art film up like cat-and-mouse thriller, it’s still Austrian, and anybody who’s been following world cinema for the past decade or so knows what nihilistic vivacity that means. But I’ll spare a kindly word for Goodnight Mommy, for cruel though it is, it’s not just cruel. The genre trappings help out […]
This review is based on the slightly extended cut released to digital cinemas at the time of the film’s initial release and the direct basis for the initial DVD release, prior to some re-ordering of shots in subsequent home video releases. Out of the seven subtitles given to the theatrically-released live-action Star Wars films as […]
