THE INFERNAL MACHINE begins as a spare and tense film driven by Guy Pearce’s measured performance as tormented author Bruce Cogburn. Alas, not even Pearce’s fine work as Cogburn slowly unravels from years of guilt can make up for a script whose third act becomes cryptically obtuse, rather than dynamically charged, before it just goes… Read More »
NOTHING COMPARES
It is high time for a re-appraisal of Sinéad O’Connor. Now best remembered with a tinge of distaste for tearing up a picture of the Pope on “Saturday Night Live” in 1992, the singer is the focus of Kathryn Ferguson’s documentary, NOTHING COMPARES. Centering on O’Connor’s precipitous rise to stardom at barely 21 to the… Read More »
THE PHANTOM OF THE OPEN
In THE PHANTOM OF THE OPEN, we see the audacity of innocence. Based on the life, and wholly unlikely exploits, of Maurice Flitcroft, a name that all but demands to have a shaggy-dog story attached to it, it reveals how a man with no formal training in golf found himself competing at the British Open,… Read More »
CRIMES OF THE FUTURE
Click here for the flashback interview with David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen for EASTERN PROMISES. With CRIMES OF THE FUTURE, David Cronenberg once again presents us with a dystopian future, or is it an alternate present, that is alien and yet, somehow, instantly familiar. It’s not just the machines that mimic the skeletal structures of… Read More »
MEN
Click here to listen to the flashback interview with Alex Garland for EX MACHINA. One of the many striking images from Alex Garland’s MEN is of a serene autumnal landscape with a dark and looming entrance to a tunnel. It all but shimmers in the late afternoon sun, and then a raindrop falls into it,… Read More »
DEATH ON THE NILE
And so with DEATH ON THE NILE (2022), we learn about the man behind the moustaches. That would be Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie’s cerebral Belgian detective devoted to his “little grey cells” and keeping order in the world. The former gets short shrift, mention-wise, in this adaptation, while the latter rears its compulsive head in… Read More »
MOONFALL
MOONFALL is everything that a Roland Emmerich film should be. There are dazzling special effects. There are several plot threads happening simultaneously that occasionally show a puckish confluence. There are parent-child issues. And there is a huuuuuuuuuge story. This time, it’s the curious case of the moon shifting its orbit in a way that defies… Read More »
BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONY PORN
BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONEY PORN is neither for the intellectually timid nor the prudish. Radu Jude’s romp through cultural hypocrisy and the human penchant for being not just cruel, but also idiots, is designed to confront and confound with savage humor and brutal satire. Lest we have any illusions about the direct approach Jude… Read More »
THE CARD COUNTER
With THE CARD COUNTER, writer/director Paul Schraeder returns to his favorite themes of sin and redemption. This is no tidy tale of a fall from grace precipated by a rash decision or a moment of weakness. We have at the center a flawed man with dark impulses that he cannot control once they have been… Read More »
ETERNALS
There is quite a bit going on with THE ETERNALS, a bold attempt to marry CGI action on a grand scale with metaphysical musings about free will, while also contemplating the fundamental principles of physics vis a vis the conservation of energy in the universe. Like I said, a lot. Had it worked, it would… Read More »
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