Screen
The burden of actual Christianity
Most praise for writer/director Jesse Moss’s documentary, The Overnighters, has rightly been focused on its Steinbeckian nature and explosive revelations about struggling workers in North Dakota. That wasn’t the big takeaway for me. The big takeaway for me was how ...
L’enfant du cinema
A director only makes one movie in his life,” said filmmaker Jean Renoir. “Then he breaks it up and makes it again...
Love in all the wrong places
William (Gethin Anthony) is 28, loud, abrasive and generally unpleasant to be around. He yells, swears, leers, drinks too much and thinks too little. He is your typical obnoxious American abroad, both to the fine people of Demark and to his two traveling companions. ...
Winter camp
Your tolerance for writer/ director Gregg Araki’s White Bird in a Blizzard hinges on your appreciation (or lack thereof ) for campy content. If you were weaned on John Waters, you’ll gobble up every cheese-tastic second, from a horny housewife lusting towards her ...
I’ll miss you, 2014
From a purely fiscal standpoint, 2014 sucked. Box office totals are likely to finish at the lowest amount since 2008, which I’m sure makes everyone feel real bad for the billionaires in Hollywood. For those of us who could care less about opening day multipliers and ...
Children of the night
The fictional oil town of Bad City, Iran is, as far as we know, populated with pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers, drug users, a stray family member or two, a cat and The Girl (Sheila Vand). Casting a menacing shadow over this ghost town, The Girl rides a skateboard, ...
Ending in the Middle Earth
There are many things I don’t understand: quantum mechanics, car commercials, who put the bomp in the bomb bah bomp bah bomp...
Five unforgettable films from a master
Mike Nichols was a rare one. He began in comedy, moved to the stage and then made his way to Hollywood, where he forever changed the face of cinema. Sandwiched between the French New Wave and the New American Cinema, Nichols helped bring movies back into the adult ...
Happy, little clouded
Actual human beings made The Tale of Princess Kaguya, and you can tell. A water-colored rebuke of the robots who computer-generate most modern animation, every luscious scene is hand-crafted and flippin’ gorgeous. Sadly, the story is painted with obvious and familiar...
No big bang
In 1965, Stephen Hawking wrote his first ground-breaking thesis and wed Jane Wilde. His paper argued that if a star can collapse inwards to form a singularity, then a singularity can explode back outward. The Theory of Everything explores this same theory, only ...