7 years ago
Reviews (10 posts found)
“Eden”
On the surface, Mia Hansen-Løve’s exquisite, delicately nostalgic film Eden is a personal homage to the “French Touch” generation that gives electronic music its long-overdue eulogy in cinema. It is a beautiful, slick, and streamlined surface, ripe with melanc...
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“The Tribe”
Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy’s The Tribe has ridden an enticing hook—it’s performed entirely in sign language, with no subtitles—to considerable critical and festival acclaim. But is there much to it beyond the admittedly fascinating formal gimmick? While it’s temp...
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“The Overnight”
You might have heard that the 2015 Sundance Film Festival has been an exceptionally “sexy” one (even for Sundance) with a range of films, from The Bronze to Sleeping with Other People, that either take seriously or outrageously goof around bedroom intimacy. Wr...
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“The Wolfpack”
The Wolfpack, Crystal Moselle's debut documentary film, opens with a shot of the New York City skyline at twilight as seen through a fence. Considering the subject of the film, the mostly shut-in Angulo family, this image grows heavy with significance as their...
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“Soaked in Bleach”
Was Kurt Cobain murdered? Twenty-one years since Cobain's death and there are passionate followers who protest that the Nirvana front man did not die by his own hand. Kurt Cobain's death was officially ruled suicide by the state police, but that hasn't been en...
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“Live From New York!”
A couple years back, I interviewed Bill Hader, who told me of a hilarious-sounding Alan Alda sketch he'd pitched for "Saturday Night Live," only to be shot down by executive producer Lorne Michaels with the query: "Why now?"
It's a question that could just as...
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“The Yes Men Are Revolting”
For over 15 years, activists Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos (aka Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno) have pulled multiple high-profile culture-jamming stunts as the Yes Men. The Yes Men Are Revolting, co-directed by Bichlbaum and Bonanno alongside Laura Nix, is th...
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“Me and Earl and the Dying Girl”
There’s an art to manipulating a moviegoing audience. Every movie practices this art. Filmmakers have to sculpt their viewers’ responses to their work, even if only to a limited extent; some do it less than others, or perhaps they do such a good job exploiting...
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“Jurassic World”
It’s impossible to discuss Jurassic World, the large-scale fourth entry in the dinosaur-laden franchise, without acknowledging the T-Rex in the room: Jurassic Park. The 1993 film by Steven Spielberg looms large over this one, not just because of its unshakable...
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“Set Fire to the Stars”
Like all projects based around the lives of actual human beings, the Dylan Thomas biopic Set Fire the Stars has to contend with the problem of dramatizing reality. “This happened,” the biopic tells us, but savvy viewers know that even the best biopics tend to ...
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