|
|
Phantom Thread
(2017)
|
Dan Callahan
|
"Phantom Thread is a movie filled with performances that feel like the best Method acting from the mid-20th century, when actors like Montgomery Clift and Julie Harris seemed to know every minute of each day in the past lives of their characters."
Posted Jan 19, 2018
|
|
|
Call Me by Your Name
(2017)
|
Dan Callahan
|
"Call Me by Your Name is a great love story, and it is also a story about the way that Guadagnino's camera loves and brings out Hammer as an actor who can express joy or inner turmoil with a glance."
Posted Nov 23, 2017
|
|
|
Jackie
(2016)
|
Kenji Fujishima
|
Pablo LarraÃn's film is concerned with elucidating levels of performance in public and private spheres.
Posted Nov 28, 2016
|
|
|
Applause
(2009)
|
Matthew Connolly
|
Though utterly convincing as a renowned theater actress, it's clear from her work in Applause that Paprika Steen has a face for the camera.
Posted Apr 07, 2016
|
|
|
Men at Work
(1990)
|
Odie Henderson
|
Men at Work is patient zero for the plague of Charlie Sheen movies that infected the 1990s.
Posted Aug 28, 2015
|
|
|
Wild at Heart
(1990)
|
Robert C. Crumbow
|
The power of the film is the endurance of an Elvis Presley song (or two), the staying power of a children's movie, and the sight and sound of a match being struck: romantically mellow, wackily comic, and deadly, darkly serious.
Posted Aug 14, 2015
|
|
|
Quick Change
(1990)
|
Odie Henderson
|
Quick Change requires a leap of faith from the audience.
Posted Jul 16, 2015
|
|
|
Die Hard 2
(1990)
|
Evan Davis
|
Most sequels try to hide from their derivative essence.
Posted Jun 29, 2015
|
|
|
Tales From the Darkside: The Movie
(1990)
|
Odie Henderson
|
Privilege is also a crime in Cat from Hell, which once again pits the rich against a supernatural force for whom money holds no currency.
Posted May 04, 2015
|
|
|
Cinderella
(2015)
|
Kenji Fujishima
|
It's been made with enough care and belief in its material that it manages to refresh our relationship to the iconic tale.
Posted Mar 11, 2015
|
|
|
Salesman
(1969)
|
Matt Zoller Seitz
|
With his weathered face, Chiclet teeth and hints of baseline depression, Paul the Badger is the film's foremost emblem of American malaise, a fortysomething Working Joe chewed up in the gears of consumerist expectations.
Posted Mar 09, 2015
|
|
|
Mommy
(2014)
|
Tomas Hachard
|
For a director whose characters regularly display an abundance of melodramatic sentiment, Xavier Dolan leaves himself plenty of emotional cover in his movies.
Posted Jan 21, 2015
|
|
|
Nightcrawler
(2014)
|
Tomas Hachard
|
Nightcrawler lives by Gyllenhaal's great performance, but it dies by the limits of his character.
Posted Oct 28, 2014
|
|
|
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
(2014)
|
Michael Nordine
|
Perhaps we can consider films like Babel the necessary ashes from which Birdman had to rise and hope Alejandro González Iñárritu's ascendance continues.
Posted Oct 12, 2014
|
|
|
Young Einstein
(1988)
|
Odie Henderson
|
Serious's most distinguishing feature is his unruly hair, which serves as both a reminder of Einstein's own unkempt mane and the endless series of '80s-era stand-up comedians memorable only for their wacky hairdos.
Posted Aug 06, 2014
|
|
|
Lock Up
(1989)
|
Clayton Dillard
|
There's nothing fun, however, about Lock Up's absent social interests, which are made particularly deplorable through a refusal to address any semblance of a socio-political zeitgeist.
Posted Aug 04, 2014
|
|
|
Starry Eyes
(2014)
|
Calum Marsh
|
The film, in the end, doesn't have much to say about the nature of fame and ambition, other than a bit of facile posturing and shopworn wisdom, and frankly, Widmyer and Kolsch seem more interested in exploitation than reflection.
Posted Jul 30, 2014
|
|
|
Weekend at Bernie's
(1989)
|
Steve Macfarlane
|
Ted Kotcheff's moth-bitten, notoriously macabre comedy Weekend at Bernie's is best--and most rewardingly--revisited as an unintended rumination on the queasy moral crises of Reaganomics-era America.
Posted Jul 06, 2014
|
|
|
Batman
(1989)
|
Kenji Fujishima
|
Returning to Tim Burton's 1989 Batman in light of Christopher Nolan's recent, remarkably successful Batman trilogy turns out to be quite a fascinating experience.
Posted Jun 23, 2014
|
|
|
The Liberator
(2013)
|
Oscar Moralde
|
It cannot show history with any sort of complexity, so it instead gives us masses of people moved by Bolvar's words, and gorgeous sweeping vistas of the landscape backed by a stirring orchestra.
Posted Jun 18, 2014
|
|
|
Natural Sciences
(2014)
|
Oscar Moralde
|
Breezy and slight in its runtime, Matas Lucchesi has crafted a coming-of-age film that's modest in its ambitions, but touching nonetheless.
Posted Jun 17, 2014
|
|
|
Club sándwich
(2013)
|
James Lattimer
|
As each of his running gags peters out into tidy resolution and the tired old tropes of the coming-of-age story rear their head, the overriding impression is that a bit of shit-shovelling might do Eimbcke the world of good.
Posted Jun 16, 2014
|
|
|
Tir
(2013)
|
James Lattimer
|
While it feels churlish to criticize such a topical, heartfelt endeavour, it's also hard not to groan at a film whose final message is underlined by its protagonist literally shovelling shit.
Posted Jun 16, 2014
|
|
|
Arraianos
(2012)
|
James Lattimer
|
It's only toward the end of the film, as one of the old women is seen sitting at a sewing machine in a modern house, that you realise just how far out of space and time it's transported you.
Posted Jun 16, 2014
|
|
|
Costa da morte
(2013)
|
James Lattimer
|
Quite apart from the sheer visual joy generated by Patio's images, his injections of gentle humour in the voiceover anecdotes and lithe shifts in focus give the film a sense of forward motion and flow that thankfully never lets up.
Posted Jun 16, 2014
|
|
|
Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater
(2013)
|
James Lattimer
|
Even if some of the Linklater film montages verge on YouTube fan videos, there's no denying the considerable skill involved in capturing such a natural-seeming conversation and then having its cadences dictate its structure.
Posted Jun 16, 2014
|
|
|
Vampire's Kiss
(1989)
|
Robert C. Crumbow
|
Vampire's Kiss, pretty much never recognized, is even more important today than it was in the summer of 1989.
Posted Jun 07, 2014
|
|
|
Renegades
(1989)
|
Steve Macfarlane
|
What's left is a thin daguerreotype of an idea that was losing steam before cameras were even rolling.
Posted Jun 05, 2014
|
|
|
Dead Poets Society
(1989)
|
Odie Henderson
|
Dead Poets Society purports to be about the bravery of following one's own path. This is a bright, shining lie, one the film is ballsy enough to tell to your face.
Posted Jun 04, 2014
|
|
|
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
(1989)
|
Ted Pigeon
|
For all its deficiencies and inconsistencies, Last Crusade endears itself to audiences by the utter idiosyncrasy of its execution.
Posted May 23, 2014
|
|
|
For Queen and Country
(1988)
|
Clayton Dillard
|
Unlike Denzel Washington, whose acting career was soon to prosper, Martin Stellman hasn't directed another film since.
Posted May 19, 2014
|
|
|
Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart
(2014)
|
Clayton Dillard
|
Private Violence is directive American trauma thinkpiece, insistent that its troubles can be confronted head-on.
Posted Mar 03, 2014
|
|
|
Private Violence
(2014)
|
Clayton Dillard
|
Jeremiah Zagar's structure and politics devolve from questioning a particular kind of mediated fervor to concerning itself with more obvious issues of judicial malpractice.
Posted Mar 03, 2014
|
|
|
Ukraine Is Not a Brothel
(2013)
|
Clayton Dillard
|
What Kitty Green lacks in resolution, the film makes up for by implicitly stating that image-whether self- or media-made-is all that ultimately matters.
Posted Mar 03, 2014
|
|
|
Concerning Violence
(2014)
|
Clayton Dillard
|
The film struggles at times to transcend its academic presentation as an advanced visual essay explicating a theoretical text.
Posted Mar 02, 2014
|
|
|
Manakamana
(2013)
|
Clayton Dillard
|
Its urgent insistence upon rekindled patience and compassion make it a peculiar kind of structuralist essay film--and one of the most compelling in recent memory.
Posted Mar 02, 2014
|
|
|
Happy Valley
(2014)
|
Clayton Dillard
|
Happy Valley quietly reveals the structures that assist deviant behavior as the site of true horror.
Posted Mar 01, 2014
|
|
|
Rich Hill
(2014)
|
Clayton Dillard
|
The directors allow their camera to probe and linger in spaces of disorder and grime, but without any discernible purpose other than gaining access to lower-class spaces.
Posted Mar 01, 2014
|
|
|
The Notorious Mr. Bout
(2014)
|
Clayton Dillard
|
The Notorious Mr. Bout doesn't untangle the moral and ethical quandary presented here by the density of reconciling public sins with private passions.
Posted Feb 28, 2014
|
|
|
Intruders
(2013)
|
Jesse Cataldo
|
Using personal differences, economic rifts, and familiar city-versus-country conflicts to lay the groundwork for a complex murder mystery, Intruders remains a consistently entertaining and surprising sophomore effort.
Posted Feb 21, 2014
|
|
|
Papusza
(2013)
|
Ela Bittencourt
|
Papusza is at its most enthralling in some of the flashbacks, where we glimpse the heroine as an agent of her own fate.
Posted Feb 21, 2014
|
|
|
Metro Manila
(2012)
|
Kenji Fujishima
|
It easily shows up Ellis's panoply of crime-drama clichs and overall touristic gaze.
Posted Feb 20, 2014
|
|
|
The Weight
(2012)
|
Chuck Bowen
|
It's one of a kind.
Posted Feb 19, 2014
|
|
|
The Sacrament
(2013)
|
Chuck Bowen
|
Based on the evidence offered here, West would appear to believe that all cultists come to their way of life by an inherent lunacy or stupidity and nothing more.
Posted Feb 19, 2014
|
|
|
Our Sunhi
(2013)
|
Chris Cabin
|
A past of repressed feelings and bad trysts is summoned, but the conversations between Sunhi and her men seem to pivot more on questions of a sustainable career in filmmaking.
Posted Feb 18, 2014
|
|
|
Felony
(2013)
|
Chuck Bowen
|
Felony reveals itself to be a profoundly cynical movie posing as a work of idealism.
Posted Feb 14, 2014
|
|
|
Boyhood
(2014)
|
John Semley
|
Linklater has crafted a quotidian epic, a film sprawling in scope and ambition, bottomless in human feeling. Not since Altman's Nashville has an American film felt as real as life itself.
Posted Feb 14, 2014
|
|
|
20,000 Days on Earth
(2014)
|
John Semley
|
It's not exactly a "revealing" documentary, if shaking out dirt is to be taken as a metric by which these sorts of biographical sketches should be judged.
Posted Feb 10, 2014
|
|
|
The Better Angels
(2014)
|
John Semley
|
Edwards's homage to his master plays like sycophantic, if well-meaning, imitation, like a kid trying to impress his dad by swinging his golf clubs or clumsily strumming a guitar.
Posted Feb 10, 2014
|
|
|
Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter
(2014)
|
John Semley
|
A film that begins as a weird, halfway-considered ode to the sway of the cinema ends up making a case against that same power.
Posted Feb 09, 2014
|
