8 years ago
All posts by Luke Goodsell
The Director of “Mustang” On Its Surprising Inspiration
Set in a remote Northern Turkish village on the cusp of fairy tale, Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s Mustang explores the suffocating world of five teenage sisters put under house arrest after an indiscretion threatens their chastity in the eyes of the local patriarchy. ...
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“Entertainment” Is One of the Year’s Best Films
The idea of the sad clown is as old as comedy itself, and yet it’d be too easy to classify Rick Alverson’s new film—which revolves around the existential journey of a standup performer—as just another in the long line of stories about depressed funnymen and th...
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“Spectre” Is Workmanlike Filmmaking
The best Bond films were wise enough not to take themselves too seriously, generally aware that they were selling a fantasy package of moral escapism, aspirational heterosexuality and killer theme tunes, the majority of which have endured as richer cultural ar...
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“Pan” Is A Cut Above Other Fantasy Reimaginings
J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan already had one notorious reimagining in Steven Spielberg’s Hook, and the existence of Joe Wright’s new “prequel” immediately conjures the specter of the dreadful Oz the Great and Powerful: both involve a contrived origin story about th...
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“The Intern” Gets Only Partial Credit
Nancy Meyers wants you to know just how much she loathes the term “chick flick,” and with good reason. She’s had to deal with the condescending label time and again over her 35-year career as a writer, producer, and director, as though her work, though occasio...
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“Breathe” Is The New Classic Of Teen-Centric Cinema
Toxic friendships between teenage girls have given us some memorable cinema, from the sarcastic (Ghost World) to the cruel (The Craft) to the outright deadly (Heathers). If you believe Jennifer’s Body, hell is a teenage girl and two of them at war is enough to...
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“Prince” Is A Buoyant and Charming Debut
In Holland, first you get the energy drink, then you get the purple Lamborghini, then you get the women—or so it goes in Sam de Jong’s buoyant and charming debut Prince, a familiar coming-of-age scenario energized via the fresh lens of the 28-year-old Dutch mu...
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“Fantastic Four” Isn’t Terrible, Just Unremarkable
A cursory browse of the Internet suggests that the new Fantastic Four may as well be one of the worst films ever made: an Adam Sandleresque score on Low Hanging Fruit, unusually harsh user rating on the Internet Males Database, and widely reported tales of pro...
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Brando vs. Brando: Dueling Visions Of The Icon
Was latter-day Marlon Brando the corpulent madman of myth, or a visionary genius who’d already moved on to the next level of movie acting? While the perception of the 20th century’s most famous actor as a paycheck-cashing recluse in his later years endures in ...
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“Phoenix” Is Both Preposterous And Haunting
How far will two people go to preserve their respective illusions? Chilling and tender in equal measure, German director Christian Petzold’s dark romance Phoenix is a study of post-World War II identity in flux, playing as both a preposterous melodrama and a m...
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