Review: Come As You Are Is a Road Trip of Self Discovery and Ability
Based loosely on a 2011 Belgian work called Hasta La Vista, as well as the life of wheelchair-bound disabilities activist Asta Philpot (who endorses this film), Come As You Are […]
Review: Italian Mafia Drama The Traitor Channels the Chaos, Glam of the ’80s
So much of director Marco Bellocchio’s (Devil in the Flesh, Fists in the Pocket) latest, The Traitor, seems so outrageous and impossible that I had no choice but to believe […]
Review: In Its American Remake, Downhill Loses Some of the Swedish Subtleties
When the critically praised 2014 Swedish film Force Majeure (directed by Ruben Östlund) debuted, it was celebrated as a critical look at the traditional family dynamic, male bravado, and the […]
Interview: The Assistant Filmmaker Kitty Green on Casting Julia Garner and the Many Forms of Workplace Toxicity
One of the most effective and disturbing films to come out of last year’s Telluride Film Festival (and last month’s Sundance Film Festival) was one that very few people had […]
Review: Birds of Prey Wants You To Think It’s Edgier Than It Is
This is a film that wants so desperately for us to believe it’s edgy and twisted that it forgets to actually be edgy and twisted. This is not to say […]
Review: The Assistant Captures the Insidious Tensions of Hollywood’s #MeToo Problem
Though it grapples with a distinctly American scandal—that of the #MeToo movement in the movie industry—Kitty Green’s The Assistant comes off as surprisingly European in its observational, detail-oriented approach. As […]
Review: Oscar Nominated Short Documentaries Chronicle Life’s Hardest, Most Meaningful Moments
If you plan to see the Oscar Nominated Documentary Shorts Program, now playing at the Music Box Theatre, keep in mind that all five films are presented as a single […]
Review: Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts Features Five Fantastic Films
The 2020 Oscar nominated animated shorts are an excellent example of the expressive potential of cinema, each of the 5 films offering visually dynamic and thought-provoking bits of emotional storytelling. […]
Review: We Believe in Dinosaurs Details the Fight Over Creationist “Ark Park” in Kentucky
We Believe in Dinosaurs is the title of the handsomely made documentary feature directed by Clayton Brown and Monica Long Ross, but it’s also a statement repeated by several of […]
Review: Without a Why, The Song of Names Lacks a Reason to Be a Film At All
The biggest problem with The Song of Names, in a film with many of them, is that it lacks a driving why behind any of the proceedings, anything to signal to […]
Review: Don’t Think, Don’t Question, Just Embrace the Weird of Color Out of Space
If all you seek out of your movie-going experiences is a freaky technicolor narrative that features Nicolas Cage going full-tilt unhinged along the way, allow me to direct you toward […]
Review: Film Nerds Revel in the Connection, Nostalgia of At the Video Store
This one hit me right in the heart, probably because you have to be in a particular age bracket and love movies of every size and shape to remember the […]