The very first scene of Halloween works prep the audience for a gritty, stylized psychological thriller placed in the framework of the 1970s teen slasher. In the scene, two podcasters are being led through a Stanley Kubrickian asylum, where Michael...
The police are very much at the fore of American cinema this year, with at least three films – Blindspotting, The Hate U Give, and Monsters and Men – grappling with the frequent murders officers commit. But the problem of...
On the most recent episode of our flagship show here, David discussed Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Watchmen as being failed from the jump, but a completely successful rendition of that failed premise. At a much smaller scale, Mélanie Laurent’s Galveston...
A priest, a salesman, and a hippie walk into a motel. Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one, because before long, the priest will be digging for buried treasure, the salesman making calls to Hoover, and the hippie dragging...
Megan Griffiths’ Sadie has many commendable qualities that set it up for potential Oscar nominations but none of these qualities manage to work together in a cohesive way. This is not to say the movie is a bust, but it...
Have recent news reports on the possibly inevitable ramifications of climate change put you in the mood to absorb some masochistically anxiety-stoking imagery involving the juxtaposition of lush greenery with horrific bodily destruction? If so, rush right out to the...
Jordan Blady’s Berlin is a place of halogen lamp glow and cigarette smoke haze. It’s evocative and immersive without being especially flattering to the people captured in his frame. All of which makes it the perfect look and feel for...
I can’t believe we’re still doing the blue and orange thing. It’s been nearly a decade since smart, observant film buffs began taking to the Internet to decry the suffocating trend in digital color grading that made every major studio...
Gaspar Noé’s Climax is a Gaspar Noé movie, by which I mean that it delights in thrilling you as much it does in shocking and upsetting you. Let’s start with the first half of that equation. I’m delighted to report that this...
It continues to be fascinating to watch Ryan Gosling become a better and better actor. In his early films like Murder by Numbers and The United States of Leland, he seemed to define emoting as furrowing his brow and knowing...
