The one thing you can say about WICKED: FOR GOOD without fear of contradiction is that there is a lot of it. Not just the running time, which feels like so much more than 138 minutes, but in the Rococo exuberance of the production design. So much production design. It goes beyond mere attention to… Read More »
THE RUNNING MAN
In the 1970s, a simpler time, we had NETWORK, Paddy Chayefsky’s disturbingly prescient fever-dream of a black comedy about a television network run amorally amok thanks to a viewing audience with the attention span of a nudibranch and an alarming lack of critical thinking skills. We laughed and comforted ourselves that such extremes could never… Read More »
DEAD OF WINTER
There is much to admire about Emma Thompson in DEAD OF WINTER, not the least of which is the way she captures the cadence and the spirit of the Minnesota accent with the same effortless skill that embodies the rest of her performance. Virtually silent for most of her time on screen, she is simply… Read More »
THE LONG WALK
Stephen King started writing THE LONG WALK when the Vietnam War was still raging, and echoes of its impact on the psyche of the United States reverberate through the film version. In a near future dystopia, young men in the prime of life, struggling in a country economically ravaged by war, voluntarily sign up for… Read More »
SPINAL TAP 2: THE END CONTINUES
Perhaps the best news of this troubled summer is that SPINAL TAP 2: THE END CONTINUES is the equal of the original. Walking that fine line between stupid and clever, it is once again a razor-sharp satire of both the music business and documentary filmmaking, lacerating the pomposity and the venality of both with breathtaking… Read More »
THE CONJURING: LAST RITES
It’s as though all involved with THE CONJURING franchise know that it’s running out of steam. Rather than just end it, though, they have devised THE CONJURING: LAST RITES, using that old movie adage of show, don’t tell, in order to give us irrefutable proof of same. This entry limps through its paces in a… Read More »
THE ROSES
The reason that THE ROSES succeeds so well as a romcom, one that dares to be more sentimental than the original, is that it heightens two things. The sense of emotional as well as physical danger that the eponymous couple suffer during their marital breakdown, and the emotional depth that Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Coleman… Read More »
LURKER
What we learn in Alex Russell’s LURKER is that Eve Harrington, while successful in her manipulations in ALL ABOUT EVE, is a mere piker compared to Matthew Morning, Russell’s protagonist in his taut thriller. Exploring themes of love, obsession, and the symbiotic relationship between fan and star, this psychological character study of desperation with a… Read More »
SPLITSVILLE
Click here for the flashback interview with Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin for THE CLIMB. SPLITSVILLE is a visceral film. It evokes not just laughter but the sort of gasps that are more rightly the province of horror films, and this is where its true genius lives. While exploring the ridiculous lengths to which… Read More »
CAUGHT STEALING
Many years ago, I interviewed Darren Aronofsky for his maiden effort, PI (a terrific film that should be on everyone’s watchlist). In the course of our conversation about the nexus of Kabbalah and computing, he opined that, as in PI, he wanted to populate his films with, in his words, tough Jews. There are certainly… Read More »
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