Sebastián Lelio makes exactly one type of movie, and I like it less every time I see it. Take, on this hand, a terrific performance by an actress playing the kind of character who doesn’t generally show up as the protagonist of a movie. Take, on the other hand, nothing fucking whatsoever. Not dramatic urgency, […]
2015’s Embrace of the Serpent, director Ciro Guerra’s third film, was a story of indigenous traditions in Colombia being corrupted and overwritten by an encounter with Westerners. It’s also one of the most remarkable sui generis films of the 2010s, a film that takes place in history but also feels outside of it; draws upon […]
We can go on about all the different things that go into the art of sketch-comedian-turned-omnipresent-media-creator Jordan Peele, but I will say that for me it’s really very simple. The reason Peele matters – the reason that the things he writes are enjoyable and good – is because more than just about any other new […]
Wonder Park is about the importance of never giving up your imaginative spark, and always following whatever weird, idiosyncratic passion is yours and yours alone, and in the process showing the world something incredible that it has never seen. That this message is attached to this movie has broken my irony meter so hard that […]
The reputation Climax has earned for itself – one of them, anyway – is that it’s the most likable, audience-friendly feature of the five made by infamous French provocateur Gaspar Noé. The best I can come up with is that this is a polite way of saying “no explicit cumshots in this one”, because there’s […]
An alien invasion picture built on the framework of a French Resistance thriller? That is absolutely an idea I think it’s worth rallying behind. Resistance thrillers can be amazing things, combining the ingenuity and mechanical precision of a great heist movie with the life-or-death stakes of a real-world history, and they can have pretty much […]
The best suspense sequence in any 2018 movie and the current front-runner for best suspense sequence in any 2019 movie depict the same event, and that event is notable primarily for having happened almost 50 years ago, and because everybody in the world already know how it ends. I refer to the 20 July, 1968 […]
The question that must be answered by a movie titled Arctic, and I daresay the only question: does it seem to be extremely cold? And this is something that the 2018 Icelandic thriller of that very title can answer with an emphatic yes. The cinematography, by Tómas Örn Tómasson, is sublimely severe and unyielding, capturing […]
One need not enjoy watching the films produced by Marvel Studios over the past eleven years (as I do not) to acknowledge that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is, if nothing else, unfailingly consistent. Producer Kevin Feige rules with a heavy hand, and if that means that it’s almost impossibly rare for one of his movies […]
The story goes that A Madea Family Funeral is going to be the final big-screen appearance by Tyler Perry’s most famous and infamous creation: the bossy, violent, and vulgar Mabel “Madea” Simmons, played by Perry himself with increasingly diminished enthusiasm over the years. Absolutely nothing in the film suggests that will be the case (it […]
For over 50 years, dating at least back to 1962’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, some of our greatest actresses have spent their career doldrums playing psychopathic monsters in trashy thrillers. There is nothing noble about the hagsploitation tradition, but there is an awful lot that is dizzying, rollicking fun, seeing icons and towering screen […]
It is well to avoid making absolute statements, especially absolute statements about weirdly idiosyncratic and fundamentally unquantifiable things, but I’m feeling feisty. So here goes: I think it’s entirely likely that the most interesting and important thing happening to cinema anywhere in the world right now is the Chinese film industry’s attempts – largely successful […]
