Advertisements There is something in every atheist itching to believe, and something in every believer itching to doubt. Writer Mignon McLaughlin explored this idea in The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, which has become a roadmap of sorts for my interpretations of the world…
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Advertisements A crocodile’s corpse is not something I ever thought I would have sympathy for — but then again, I never thought he’d do it, he being a man world-worn and toothpick-thin. A better student of anatomy would be able to chart…
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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…
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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.…
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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.…
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Advertisements “The epic [is] for Israelis and the documentary for Palestinians.” That’s how legendary filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard is said to have wryly described Palestinian cinema — as being confined by its political reality to capturing only that reality. In the weeks following…
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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.…
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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.…
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'Mad Bills To Pay' is a modern dose of social realism.…
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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…
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