Activist & Political · Drama · Essays
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a[…]
Activist & Political · African American · Essays
The existence of films such as Black Samson and The Spook Who Sat by the Door reminds us that there was an era, however fleeting, in which commercial films discarded[…]
Documentaries · Philosophy · Religion & Spirituality
“All time exists all the time” – from the documentary What Is Reality? * * * Emancipate yourself from the tunnel-visioned timekeeper! Return the unbending arrow of time to its[…]
Activist & Political · Festivals & Awards
Emblematic of the prevailing sober atmosphere was the festival’s Invisible Hands Tribute, a series of five films about the erosion of workers’ rights, unemployment, and collective action. * * *[…]
The secrecy part of Secret Cinema relates very much to this digital and automated world that we are living in. People increasingly want to get away from screens. They want[…]
Activist & Political · Comedy · Horror
Yes, Society supplies the body horror, well crafted in all its sticky glory by Japanese effects expert Screaming Mad George, but it fuses it with teen movie, conspiracy thriller, and[…]
Actors & Personalities · Festivals & Awards · Historical & Epic
The moral of this particular dose of Oscar reality: You don’t have to be a royal to grab the Academy’s attention, but it sure helps if you’re pretending to be[…]
Drama · LGBT & Queer · SF & Fantasy
As in romance novels, the excitement of sexual provocation is the heart of the story. It occupies two-thirds of the film: “His finger brushed mine” developed in fifteen stages. The[…]
Franchises & Series · SF & Fantasy
One might argue that Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi attempts at deconstruction yet again, depicting the original trilogy’s heroic Luke as an inexplicably jaded Jedi living in self-imposed exile on[…]
Comics · Franchises & Series · SF & Fantasy
So as you peel back the folds of the opening of Batman v Superman you get the sense that even in its immediately awkward, tone-deaf plotting, this is not a perfectly[…]
Biopic · Directors · Drama · Experimental & Underground
“Hollywood oddballs are like everything else in Hollywood. Don’t look too close.” * * * Greg Sestero’s now reasonably famous book The Disaster Artist, co-written by Tom Bissell, is much[…]
Activist & Political · Historical & Epic · LGBT & Queer
Ironically, with the passing of the Singapore of yesteryear, the work that best captures the significant geographical landmarks lost to time is not a local film or documentary, but a[…]
Crime · Franchises & Series · Philosophy · TV & Streaming
As Jonah Weiner puts it, the final scene “does stage a violent death, patently and unambiguously: ours.” If the cut-to-black is punitive, it’s also Chase’s memento mori: remember that you[…]
The notion of the body as entry to the soul becomes a fallacy: penetration is not a portal to another person’s psyche – just as Sagawa’s cannibalism of Hartevelt could[…]
Historical & Epic · Horror · Women in Film
The Witch is about what is in woman that is presumed not to exist, because it cannot be seen. * * * Robert Altman’s 3 Women is mostly a high-kitsch[…]
Drama · Philosophy · SF & Fantasy
“I was the shadow of the waxwing slain By the false azure in the window pane. I was the smudge of ashen fluff – and I Lived on, flew on,[…]
Horror · Philosophy · Religion & Spirituality
We will go back to our old gods again. – Goethe * * * My eyes. My eyes. I’m seeing again. Across a gulf of how-many years, the light is[…]
Alan Vanneman goes to the Met – the Metropolitan Opera, that is. The Met was looking for a film critic who likes opera to review Thomas Adès operatic version of[…]
Actors & Personalities · Drama · DVD & Blu-ray · Silents
What we see in Brooks and Beery on the screen is a mixup of the actors’ hardwired personalities and those contrived for their roles, but this is the sort of[…]
Wonderstruck seems a retreat from some of Haynes’ established themes, in that it’s not set in the fifties and, as a PG-rated, child-oriented adventure film, instead pursues the marvelous and[…]
