8 years ago
Featured (10 posts found)
“Tokyo Tribe” Is Utterly Indelible
Many critics have attempted in vain to hurl comparisons to films past at the madness that is Tokyo Tribe, only to watch their references pathetically slide away from its majestic visage of grimy neon. Sure, one can draw the line from this to The Warriors or St...
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“Bone Tomahawk” Isn’t Fooling Around
I’m not sure if the disparate genre elements in Bone Tomahawk all hang together quite as well as they should, but one thing for certain is that first-time writer-director S. Craig Zahler isn’t fooling around. A sci-fi horror cannibal exploitation picture by wa...
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The Cinema of Tumult and Discovery: On Judy Garland
“You know, I figure you have to know what you’re singing about before you can get the idea over to other people.” —Judy Garland, Babes in Arms (1939)
It was a year of tumult and of discovery. The Great Plains were ravaged by the Dust Bowl. Amelia Earhart comp...
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“Re-Animator” At 30
In his book Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century, Jonathan Glover discusses what he calls "the cold joke”—wringing humor out of a lack of respect for human life—as a method people often use to distance themselves from atrocities they partake in, ...
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The Kingdom of the Sick on Film in 2015
If we ask the movies of 2015 to tell us what a person dealing with mental health issues looks like, who looks back at us? It could be Sarah Silverman’s character in I Smile Back, a suburban housewife afflicted with addiction and possible manic depression. Or i...
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Mousterpiece Cinema, Episode 219: “Bridge of Spies”
Do you love films? I mean, really love films? I'm talking classic movies like The Conversation and The Godfather. You do? Good, because it's time for a special episode of Mousterpiece Cinema, but it might as well be called I Love Films. Why? We're talking abou...
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Introducing Adult Beginners
Here's the most embarrassing sentence I’ve ever had to write in my ten-year career as a film critic: until last week, I’d never seen Citizen Kane.
Determine for yourself how lame my excuse is: New Yorkers can almost always count on getting to see great new pr...
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Why “Beasts of No Nation” Is Merciless and Difficult to Watch
There are two integral components to any review of Beasts of No Nation: Its identity as a piece of art and its identity as a product of an industry experiencing post-millennial growing pains. “Netflix presents a Netflix original film,” the credits tell us befo...
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On The Rhythms of Sorkinese
In Steve Jobs, director Danny Boyle’s most overt visual showcase is relegated to the film’s transitions. Set backstage at three different tech product launches, the film makes two major leaps forward in time between 1984 and 1988 and again between 1988 and 199...
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“Room” Is Vivid and Poignant
Note. This review was originally published as part of our 2015 Toronto International Film Festival coverage.
Going into Room not knowing anything about the Emma Donoghue novel on which it’s based, I found myself, in its opening moments, forced into the proces...
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