It was, perhaps, inevitable that there would one day be a big-screen adaptation of the wildly popular computer game, Minecraft. That being the case, we could have done far worse than A MINECRAFT MOVIE, a live-action extravaganza that will thrill the fans (and the kiddies) but leave the rest of us longing for more Jennifer… Read More »
SUNDOWN
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 »
ABOUT ENDLESSNESS (Om det oändliga)
In one of the series of vignettes that make up Roy Andersson’s ABOUT ENDLESSNESS, we find a city café where the patrons sit in carefully constructed isolation among one another, in the foreground, a dentist who we know from the previous vignette, is in a bad mood and plagued with problems. Snow falls. Christmas carols… Read More »
THE DEAD DON’T DIE
THE DEAD DON’T DIE takes the tropes, idioms, and beloved foibles of low-budget zombie flicks and, with a skillful flick of its auteur’s cinematic wrist, recontextualizes them into a stylized gloss on the new normal of 2019. Certainly the “Make America White Again” ball cap sported by the most reviled citizen (Steve Buscemi) of sleepy… Read More »
MAZE
There is a distinct strain of melancholy nihilism throughout Stephen Burke’s MAZE. Based on the 1983 prison break by 38 inmates of the eponymous maximum security prison in Norther Ireland, it mixes the suspense of plotting an escape dependant upon split-second timing from an inescapable prison with the psychological games the prisoners play with the… Read More »
A MAN CALLED OVE (En man som heter Ove)
When we meet the title character of A MAN CALLED OVE, he is having a very bad day. Squabbling with shop clerks, policing his neighbors regarding littering and pets, and being fired at almost 60 from the job he’s had since he was 16. Ove’s face is a study in dour dyspepsia, and his attitude… Read More »
IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE (Kraftidioten)
IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE is a bracingly original foray into very black humor. Set in the arctic-lite of rural Norway, it is a tale of relentless pursuit, clueless hubris, and the eccentricities that long winters provoke in the population. Writer Kim Fupz Aakeson and director Hans Petter Moland serve up this arch film about fathers and sons… Read More »
EVERY THING WILL BE FINE
Tragedy is complicated. Guilt and anger, acceptance and forgiveness don’t fall into neat pigeonholes in Wim Wender’s EVERY THING WILL BE FINE, a title that is what everyone aspires to in this small but powerful tale of searching for redemption. The central character is Tomas (James Franco), a good writer with a middling career and… Read More »
YOU, THE LIVING (DU LEVANDE)
The somnambulant denizens of Roy Andersonns YOU, THE LIVING (DU LEVANDE) inhabit a dreary world that barely has color and, for the living of the title, barely any present tense. Theirs is a placidity that is barely two steps from torpor, even in the face of emotion, even in the face of death. The several… Read More »
EASY MONEY (SNABBA CASH)
EASY MONEY is an ironic title for a sharply observed, tonally complex story of people who dont fall into easily definable categories. Money is the driving force in all their lives, but they are not all people who have sold their souls for it. There is nothing so cliché in this Swedish import starring Joel… Read More »