Potent and deliberately enigmatic, Michel Franco’ SUNDOWN doesn’t so much tell a story as put a mirror up to its audience. With a central character that never explains, only exists with his own imperturbable agenda, it is for us to project our own ideas onto him as we sort out the mysteries of his actions… Read More »
LUCE
LUCE is less a film than a political dialectic on race and class in these United States, and a brilliant, exquisitely performed one at that. Told with a deliberate, sometimes maddening ambiguity, it challenges the audience at every turn about where the truth lies, and the limits of familial loyalty. By the end, not every… Read More »
THE HATEFUL EIGHT
THE HATEFUL EIGHT is an impudent, pugnacious comedy that uses the synthetic nature of its stylized homage idiom to be a whip-smart consideration of race, gender, politics, situational ethics, and very, very bad teeth. The genre is the western, but the tone is thoroughly modern as a group of the damned journey through the desolate… Read More »
ARBITRAGE
Nicholas Jareckis ARBITRAGE brings up an age-old question. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? Only in this case, the world gained is not just a showcase home, a formidable company, and an enviable family life, its also an intangible thing made of high-finance maneuvers with no… Read More »
THE INCREDIBLE HULK
Undaunted by the failure of Ang Lee’s cerebral approach to big, green Marvel superhero, the 2008 version of THE INCREDIBLE HULK succeeds where its predecessor failed. Cleverly re-imagined as a film noir, it is a dark and shadowy piece full of monsters, only some of them green. The real monsters are much more dangerous. They… Read More »