7 years ago
Featured (10 posts found)
Elisabeth Moss Is Why “Queen of Earth” Is So Earth-Shattering
Elisabeth Moss’s most famous performance to date, on television as Peggy Olson in Mad Men, is a work of layered complexity and a superb example of gradual character evolution, with Moss growing into the role as Peggy did into her male-dominated world, handling...
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“Z for Zachariah” Is Promising, But Frustrating
Recent post-apocalyptic films, from Zombieland to 28 Days Later have, to some degree kept their distance from religion—at least in an explicit sense. It's easy to link these world-weary genre pieces to theological themes in a more subtextual way, with very few...
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“Digging for Fire” Is The Most Swanberg-ish Film Yet
With another year comes another Joe Swanberg joint about middle-class ennui. There are any number of reasons to roll one’s eyes at the prolific indie filmmaker’s latest, Digging For Fire—its blatant heteronormativity, adherence to traditional gender roles, uns...
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“Sinister 2” Is Numbing Instead of Frightening
An old house, precocious children, ghosts, and a troubled past haunting a family. At first glance and on paper, Ciarán Foy’s Sinister 2, the haphazard and poorly written sequel to the focused and contrastingly minimal horror flick Sinister (2012), has all the ...
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“Grandma” Is A Perfectly Nice Vehicle for Lily Tomlin
It’s been 27 years since Lily Tomlin last had a leading role in a film. Let’s not do that again, okay? In Grandma, the actress both embraces and subtly toys with the archetype of the irascible senior citizen. Her character, Ellie Reid, is liable to brusquely i...
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“American Ultra”, Like A Stoner, Has Trouble Focusing
The trouble with Mike Howell, the ambition-deficient convenience store clerk that Jesse Eisenberg plays in the middling American Ultra, is that he keeps receiving bad news while high. Bad news—like, say, the news that the United States government has sent high...
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“Phoenix” Is The Cure for The Common Holocaust Movie
On Ricky Gervais’ sorely missed HBO sitcom Extras, Kate Winslet makes an appearance as a funhouse-mirror version of herself while shooting a Holocaust picture. In an extremely candid moment between takes, she confides in Gervais’ sad-sack Z-lister Andy Millman...
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Blu-ray Review: “The Hunger”
Tony Scott foregrounds the aesthetic context for his vampire-movie debut The Hunger before the first images roll. Over introductory credits comes the sound of goth outfit Bauhaus striking up their biggest hit, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” as the frame fades up on fron...
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“Mistress America” Is Fresh, Original, and Marvelous
In Mistress America, writers Noah Baumbach, who also directs, and Greta Gerwig, who also stars, have harmonized their distinct voices into something marvelous. Millennial communication patterns—a constant, rapid shuffle between angst, oversharing, self-mytholo...
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Persona of Interest: “Tom at the Farm”
In a tense scene in writer-director Xavier Dolan’s Tom at the Farm, the hulking Francis (Pierre-Yves Cardinal), his muscular form not hidden by his suit, pushes his deceased brother’s diminutive boyfriend Tom (Dolan), to the corner of a bathroom stall. They ar...
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