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The Zone of Interest
(2023)
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Keith Uhlich
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The result is depraved in its way, at once a po-faced drama of ignorant domestic bliss and a dryly details-oriented workplace sitcom from Hell, a Kubrick/Tarkovsky acolyte fusing The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas with Heil Honey I’m Home!
Posted Sep 25, 2023
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Perfect Days
(2023)
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Keith Uhlich
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Jeanne Dielman without the shocks to the system; Wenders’ own Paris, Texas without the emotional-topographical spine of Sam Shepard’s script and Harry Dean Stanton’s sensational lead performance.
Posted Sep 08, 2023
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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
(2023)
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Keith Uhlich
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That Ford is the one who seems most engaged here is perhaps the biggest surprise, given how gruffly above-it-all he can be onscreen when disinterested. His affection for Indiana Jones can’t be bought, even though he was.
Posted Jun 15, 2023
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Little Murders
(1971)
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Keith Uhlich
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In Little Murders, art — itself included — provides no sufficient response to chaos and barbarity. [Guest post by Michael Joshua Rowin]
Posted Feb 27, 2023
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Infinity Pool
(2023)
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Keith Uhlich
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True to its title, Infinity Pool ebbs to a non-point
Posted Jan 25, 2023
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The Day of the Jackal
(1973)
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Keith Uhlich
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Possesses a tonal coldness that aligns viewers with the assassin’s reptilian machinations. —Guest post by Michael Joshua Rowin
Posted Dec 20, 2022
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3/5
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Douchebag
(2010)
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Keith Uhlich
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Andrew Dickler gives an inspired comic performance, but the film never entirely overcomes the sense that it’s a calling-card vehicle.
Posted Nov 13, 2022
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Pinocchio
(2022)
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Keith Uhlich
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Think of this Pinocchio, at its best, as Zemeckis’s conglomerate-backed cultural critique, a nauseated state of the artistic union typified by a scene in which our little timber-carved innocent quizzically contemplates a steaming pile of horse dung.
Posted Sep 08, 2022
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Pierrot le Fou
(1965)
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Keith Uhlich
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Represents a high watermark of the art film, and in no small measure due to its despair over the artist’s ambivalent, uncertain role in an era of aesthetic, technological, and political turmoil. —Guest Post by Michael Joshua Rowin
Posted Sep 06, 2022
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Nope
(2022)
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Keith Uhlich
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There was one horrible moment when I thought the film was going to reveal itself as a stealth Cloverfield installment. Thank heaven for small favors.
Posted Jul 20, 2022
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Young Man With a Horn
(1950)
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Keith Uhlich
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Rick Martin's (Kirk Douglas) longing for artistic transcendence is melodramatically depicted as wholly other to the desires of the audience.—Guest post by Michael Joshua Rowin
Posted Jul 19, 2022
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Ikiru
(1952)
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Keith Uhlich
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Kurosawa’s masterpiece endures, still finding new ways to scare me and speak to me after all this time. —Guest post by Kenji Fujishima
Posted Jun 10, 2022
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Rope
(1948)
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Keith Uhlich
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Hitchcock examines his and his audience’s participatory roles in a centuries-old circuit of art production and reception. —Guest post by Michael Joshua Rowin
Posted Jun 10, 2022
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The Square
(2017)
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Keith Uhlich
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The Square foregrounds a dilemma at the core of artistic practice: as moving and influential as it can be, art too often exists in a realm separated from “real life,” cordoned off as safely “consumable” entertainment. —Guest post by Michael Joshua Rowin
Posted Jun 10, 2022
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Top Gun: Maverick
(2022)
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Keith Uhlich
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'Maverick' is an absurdity masking several horrors, chief among them the continued indulgence of Cruise’s virile death wish, which for me nullifies any pleasure reaped from his present-day status as The Last Movie Star™.
Posted May 19, 2022
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The Batman
(2022)
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Keith Uhlich
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The film I imagine Ricky Fitts would grow up to make after the events of 'American Beauty.'
Posted Mar 24, 2022
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Deception
(2021)
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Keith Uhlich
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Many have tried, and most have failed, at successfully translating Philip Roth from page to screen. Arnaud Desplechin makes it work.
Posted Mar 24, 2022
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After Yang
(2021)
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Keith Uhlich
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Much too 'Instagram Stories: The Motion Picture' for my taste.
Posted Mar 24, 2022
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Kimi
(2022)
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Keith Uhlich
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Soderbergh’s artistry is, at this point, all compulsion. His restless need to create is perfect, business-wise, for the age of “content,” less so if one hopes for more.
Posted Mar 04, 2022
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Il buco
(2021)
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Keith Uhlich
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A superb meld of sound, image and ruminative essence.
Posted Nov 16, 2021
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What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?
(2021)
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Keith Uhlich
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There's an overall wobbliness to most of the meanderings, as if Koberidze is too besotted with the conceptual possibilities of his digressions, and so fails to hone them into something truly special.
Posted Nov 16, 2021
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The Tsugua Diaries
(2021)
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Keith Uhlich
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The kind of irritating movie-about-moviemaking comprised more of artistic referents than lived experience.
Posted Nov 16, 2021
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Benedetta
(2021)
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Keith Uhlich
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Shart is sexy.
Posted Nov 16, 2021
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Bergman Island
(2021)
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Keith Uhlich
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That the film manages to attain vast levels of emotional resonance speaks to Hansen-Løve's talent for mining her characters' quiet lives for all they're worth.
Posted Nov 16, 2021
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Titane
(2021)
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Keith Uhlich
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The film's provocations rarely rise to the schoolyard-japing level of Ken Russell. (Tom Six's derriere-devouring oeuvre is more this shameless movie's speed.)
Posted Nov 16, 2021
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3/5
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Ondine
(2009)
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Keith Uhlich
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An intriguing mix of working-class grit and childlike fantasy that never fully comes together.
Posted Nov 08, 2021
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Old
(2021)
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Keith Uhlich
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In macro, the film explores pandemic-era anxieties about the corporate entities that hold life-or-death sway over society, but it's on the micro level that I found myself moved.
Posted Aug 03, 2021
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Pig
(2021)
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Keith Uhlich
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[Photographed] in the way of so many modern indies, with a sickly color palette and dim lighting that prosaically emphasizes the natural environs over people's faces. (A good friend of mine termed this aesthetic "Vimeo-link Cinema.")
Posted Jul 27, 2021
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No Sudden Move
(2021)
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Keith Uhlich
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The film's got plenty of ideas that you've heard before. (All it needs is Mark Ruffalo popping in to scream, "The system is rigged!")
Posted Jul 03, 2021
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Zack Snyder's Justice League
(2021)
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Keith Uhlich
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Let's not forget that the Snyder Cut was in part willed into being by a toxic social media campaign, mob rule begetting a mystical monocultural object that is finally much bigger than its ostensible creator.
Posted Mar 26, 2021
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Kid 90
(2021)
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Keith Uhlich
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Breezy on the surface, brutal underneath.
Posted Mar 26, 2021
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Mank
(2020)
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Keith Uhlich
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Mank is a love letter and a poison pen, though like much of its meticulous director's output, this film (that's not a film, though it's often made to look like one) is weighed down by the burden of time.
Posted Dec 31, 2020
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Malmkrog
(2020)
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Keith Uhlich
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Puiu makes hilarious comedies at which I never once laugh, and this is among his bleakest and blackest farces.
Posted Nov 20, 2020
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Nomadland
(2020)
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Keith Uhlich
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The film takes place in the aftermath of the 2008 recession. But it might as well be in an alternate universe where no one speaks above a whisper and "America" remains a vaguely benign abstraction.
Posted Oct 19, 2020
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Married to the Mob
(1988)
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Keith Uhlich
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Demme sees corruption-the potential for it and the indulgence of it-in everyone. Yet he doesn't neglect the humanity of the people in thrall to or trapped within those systems.
Posted Oct 07, 2020
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