Advertisements Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low is the kind of film you watch in a state of quasi-paralysis. The 1963 noir is both taut moral thriller and enthralling procedural — a film of relentless jaw-clenching tension and compulsive rhythm that sets the…
« read »Advertisements Wes Anderson is, quite famously, a details guy. Perfect symmetry, immaculate composition, and absolute devotion to every tiny element of his dollhouse creations — his work (and that of his behind-the-scenes collaborators) is dazzling in its dedication to the little things.…
« read »Fittingly, Kelly Reichardt's Cannes-closer is a portrait of a power-keg period of history glimpsed from the periphery, and a wry, withering film about living without integrity in an era that demands it.…
« read »Advertisements Documentary directors Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss’ most popular documentaries, Boys State and Girls State, follow two groups of carefully selected high schoolers tasked with hypothetically creating a democratic government from the ground up, as part of a prestigious summer program.…
« read »Predators reveals that To Catch A Predator and its modern YouTube byproducts allow for a free pass to buy into the police state and exploitative entertainment founded on useless, fumbling nods to interpersonal justice.…
« read »'Mad Bills To Pay' is a modern dose of social realism.…
« read »Advertisements In Melanie Oates’s Sweet Angel Baby, a small fishing town rests calmly against the roiling and raging Labrador Sea. Everything moves with the grain in town — if you grow up here, you either move away or stay forever, marrying your high…
« read »Advertisements Velvety shadows cut into the pristine fabric of light like sharp daggers, and faces contort with devious abandon under the weight of a brutal existence. Amidst the cold indifference of a stony city, a warm friendship is first forged and then…
« read »Advertisements There’s something off about Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’s Heretic, something rotten at its pit that leaves the film feeling macabre in its subtext in a way that feels unintentional. The film follows two young women, Mormon missionaries Sister Paxton (Chloe…
« read »Advertisements I left We Live in Time with tears in my eyes, walking in a bleary-eyed bubble filled with sweetness and love blown by the tender end of the romantic drama starring Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield. The bubble burst when I…
« read »