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3/4
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Traffic
(2000)
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John Beifuss
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Epic in scope, intimate in detail, and as overpraised as it is engrossing.
Posted Sep 06, 2023
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3.5/4
|
Lone Star
(1996)
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John Beifuss
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Ultimately, Lone Star is an appreciation of the cultural mix that makes Texas -- and America -- unique. The film says violence and prejudice are no match for love respect and humanity.
Posted Sep 06, 2023
|
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2/4
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Moulin Rouge
(2001)
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John Beifuss
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The story and script by Luhrmann and Craig Pearce... is intentionally bare-boned, in contrast to the excessive visuals. But did it have to be so unwitty and uninteresting?
Posted Sep 05, 2023
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4/4
|
Mulholland Dr.
(2001)
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John Beifuss
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It is part film noir homage, part failed-TV pilot salvage job, part Persona-style art film and altogether utterly unique except, of course, in comparison to the past movies of David Lynch.
Posted Jul 11, 2023
|
|
2.5/4
|
Magnolia
(1999)
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John Beifuss
|
Is Magnolia -- writer-director Paul Thomas sprawling, emotionally supercharged follow-up to Boogie Nights -- a flawed triumph or a bold failure? It's a bit of both -- or at three hours in length, a lot of both.
Posted Jun 30, 2023
|
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4/4
|
The Truman Show
(1998)
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John Beifuss
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It is so perfectly realized, it's hard to believe someone hasn't presented this concept on the big screen before.
Posted Feb 14, 2023
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3/4
|
Eve's Bayou
(1997)
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John Beifuss
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Smollett gives a tough but endearing performance as the King girl who learns, tragically, that families are not inviolable and invincible.
Posted Jan 09, 2023
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4/4
|
Rapture
(1979)
|
John Beifuss
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A masterwork of Bava-esque colors, Bergmanesque dislocation and Cronenbergian raptures.
Posted Feb 03, 2022
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|
3.5/4
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The Souvenir Part II
(2021)
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John Beifuss
|
In a decision that naysayers may find more ouroboros than onion (more self-cannibalizing than multi-layered), Hogg in her new film depicts the attempt to make a movie about her experiences (i.e., the first 'The Souvenir').
Posted Feb 03, 2022
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|
3.5/4
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The Suicide Squad
(2021)
|
John Beifuss
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Gunn's smart-aleck supervillain team adventure is a labor of twisted love bursting with genuinely funny sick jokes and sicker characters (Polka-Dot Man shoots out lethal polka dots).
Posted Feb 03, 2022
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4/4
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Cryptozoo
(2021)
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John Beifuss
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The filmmakers employ watercolor, pencil and other techniques to painstakingly craft a not-safe-for-kids cartoon about a sort of 'Jurassic Park' for 'cryptids.'
Posted Feb 03, 2022
|
|
3.5/4
|
Candyman
(2021)
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John Beifuss
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Nia DaCosta's reboot/sequel retains the Chicago setting of its influential 1992 predecessor but relocates the shocks to a bougie-artsy 2021 milieu where talent and education ultimately provide no escape or defense from the racist past or present.
Posted Feb 03, 2022
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|
3.5/4
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The Card Counter
(2020)
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John Beifuss
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Another of Schrader's portraits of fracturing loner diarists trundling toward penitential violence.
Posted Feb 03, 2022
|
|
3.5/4
|
Old
(2021)
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John Beifuss
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Fearsomely compelling until the final unnecessary 'twist' transforms a terrifying metaphor about the pitilessness of old age into what seems to be a pitch for a cable sci-fi series.
Posted Feb 03, 2022
|
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4/4
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Vortex
(2021)
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John Beifuss
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'Vortex' casts Franoise Lebru and horror auteur Dario Argento as an elderly couple whose brains become as disordered as their book-and-memorabilia-crammed Paris apartment after the wife is stricken with dementia.
Posted Feb 03, 2022
|
|
3.5/4
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Petite Maman
(2021)
|
John Beifuss
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Part fairy tale, part "Twilight Zone."
Posted Feb 03, 2022
|
|
3.5/4
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Memoria
(2021)
|
John Beifuss
|
The climactic revelation is both awe-inspiring and deflating, retroactively and reductively recasting the woman's experience as more a puzzle than a mystery.
Posted Feb 03, 2022
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|
3.5/4
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Dune
(2021)
|
John Beifuss
|
Mesmerizing for much of its 3-hour length - especially during its first half, when it prioritizes statecraft and intrigue and augurs and artful arrangements of strangely costumed individuals and strikingly designed alien vessels over fights and chases.
Posted Feb 03, 2022
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|
3.5/4
|
The Last Duel
(2021)
|
John Beifuss
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The climactic combat is motivated more by the knight's ego than by his concern for the welfare and honor of his wife.
Posted Feb 03, 2022
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|
3.5/4
|
The Green Knight
(2021)
|
John Beifuss
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Another haunting and profound enchantment from David Lowery.
Posted Feb 03, 2022
|
|
3.5/4
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Passing
(2021)
|
John Beifuss
|
The black-and-white photography exposes the absurdity of racial codification by reproducing every actors face in scales of gray.
Posted Feb 03, 2022
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|
4/4
|
Judas and the Black Messiah
(2021)
|
John Beifuss
|
A vivid reimagining of history...
Posted Feb 03, 2022
|
|
4/4
|
The Power of the Dog
(2021)
|
John Beifuss
|
False fronts and concealed identities poison lives and thus communities like a virus...
Posted Feb 03, 2022
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|
3.5/4
|
The Tragedy of Macbeth
(2021)
|
John Beifuss
|
The film arguably does little that Welles didn't do in 1948 under the parsimonious oversight of Republic Pictures; but why argue with a new opportunity to experience the unbeatable combination of cinematic expressionism and Shakespearean expression?
Posted Feb 03, 2022
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|
3.5/4
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Spencer
(2021)
|
John Beifuss
|
Kristen Stewart is a nerve-racked Diana, Princess of Wales, who endures a torturous Christmas weekend with her scornful royal in-laws while in a state of glam delirium. Something wicked this way comes? No, it's just the queen, trailed by her corgis.
Posted Feb 03, 2022
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|
3.5/4
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Annette
(2021)
|
John Beifuss
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Carax asks whether a standup-comic 'Ape of God' (Adam Driver) with a death on his conscience and a living puppet in his nursery deserves redemption.
Posted Feb 03, 2022
|
|
3.5/4
|
West Side Story
(2021)
|
John Beifuss
|
Spielberg demonstrates that bodies in motion especially when moving in partnership with a sympathetic and perceptive camera remain the most thrilling movie special effect.
Posted Feb 03, 2022
|
|
4/4
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The Velvet Underground
(2021)
|
John Beifuss
|
Todd Haynes documentary, sculpted largely from vintage materials, persuasively presents the Warhol-abetted, New York-incubated band as avatars of an enviable rock-and-roll authenticity.
Posted Feb 03, 2022
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4/4
|
Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
(2021)
|
John Beifuss
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The event seems less a 'Black Woodstock' (as it once was promoted) than a Utopian vision of Black art and community that a larger white establishment was too hostile or disinterested to validate.
Posted Feb 03, 2022
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|
3.5/4
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Licorice Pizza
(2021)
|
John Beifuss
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The vibe suggests "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," but goofy.
Posted Feb 03, 2022
|
|
4/4
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The French Dispatch
(2021)
|
John Beifuss
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The lapidary, peripatetic creativity which includes animation, multiple frame ratios, and many digital effects illuminates rather than obscures a hopeful but not nave message about the agonizing joy of making art.
Posted Feb 03, 2022
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4/4
|
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
(2021)
|
John Beifuss
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Hamaguchi manifests his ideas with images that are as uncluttered and direct as his stories are rich and his characters complex.
Posted Feb 03, 2022
|
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4/4
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Drive My Car
(2021)
|
John Beifuss
|
In Hamaguchi's films, men and women turn to art to redirect the unsatisfying narratives of their lives.
Posted Feb 03, 2022
|
|
3.5/4
|
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
(2021)
|
John Beifuss
|
With its debates about privacy, its street scenes of pedestrians in protective masks, and its chaotic school conferences filled with preening mothers and leering fathers, Radu Jude's comedy taps like an intubator into a culture gasping for breath.
Posted Feb 03, 2022
|
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4/4
|
Red Rocket
(2021)
|
John Beifuss
|
Nobody is making movies that feel more alive than those of Sean Baker.
Posted Feb 03, 2022
|
|
3.5/4
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Never Rarely Sometimes Always
(2020)
|
John Beifuss
|
The marketplace of ideas and the literal marketplace overlap, with devastating consequences...
Posted Feb 24, 2021
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3.5/4
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Sorry We Missed You
(2019)
|
John Beifuss
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Digs dig deep into a subject filmmakers usually ignore: the struggle to make an honest living.
Posted Feb 24, 2021
|
|
3.5/4
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Les misérables
(2019)
|
John Beifuss
|
A harrowing thriller...
Posted Feb 24, 2021
|
|
4/4
|
Vitalina Varela
(2019)
|
John Beifuss
|
A painstakingly painterly film that is as funereally deliberate as it is ecstatically wrought.
Posted Feb 24, 2021
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4/4
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Soul
(2020)
|
John Beifuss
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This may be Pixar's most 'adult' film, in terms of its themes, its mostly middle-aged characters, its sometimes experimental and -- yes -- jazzy animation (heaven is run by characters who are nothing but squiggly lines), and its soundtrack.
Posted Feb 24, 2021
|
|
3.5/4
|
The Forty-Year-Old Version
(2020)
|
John Beifuss
|
A confident debut...
Posted Feb 24, 2021
|
|
4/4
|
Minari
(2020)
|
John Beifuss
|
A film of journalistic precision and radical empathy.
Posted Feb 24, 2021
|
|
4/4
|
Shiva Baby
(2020)
|
John Beifuss
|
Frank, embarrassing, deeply Jewish, and resourceful...
Posted Feb 24, 2021
|
|
3.5/4
|
The Hunt
(2020)
|
John Beifuss
|
As funny and vivid as it is opportunistic.
Posted Feb 24, 2021
|
|
3.5/4
|
Born to Be
(2020)
|
John Beifuss
|
Compassionate and clarifying...
Posted Feb 24, 2021
|
|
3.5/4
|
Dick Johnson Is Dead
(2020)
|
John Beifuss
|
Created with an artist's insistence that realization of a vision justifies what some might call exploitation...
Posted Feb 24, 2021
|
|
4/4
|
Wolfwalkers
(2020)
|
John Beifuss
|
With animation that eschews Pixar realism for the stylized beauty of woodblock prints, Medieval tapestries, illuminated manuscripts and Celtic patterns, the latest Cartoon Saloon stunner offers a rejuvenating balm for hungry eyes and weary souls.
Posted Feb 24, 2021
|
|
3.5/4
|
Bacurau
(2019)
|
John Beifuss
|
A politicized thriller in which bloodthirsty recreation represents an acute form of racist hubris and colonialist exploitation.
Posted Feb 24, 2021
|
|
3.5/4
|
Color Out of Space
(2019)
|
John Beifuss
|
A parody of self-actualization in which an isolated family undergoes grotesque cosmic metamorphosis after being irradiated by a prismatic meteorite.
Posted Feb 24, 2021
|
|
4/4
|
The Assistant
(2019)
|
John Beifuss
|
Ingeniously compact...
Posted Feb 24, 2021
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