Click here for the flashback interview with RJ Cutler for THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE. Early on in R.J. Cutler’s documentary, BELUSHI, Harold Ramis talks about John Belushi’s enormous appetites for everything. It would be his downfall, the appetite for drugs, that is, but Cutler smartly focuses on the other appetites, the enormous ambition, and also the… Read More »
TRUTH IS THE ONLY CLIENT: THE OFFICIAL INVESTIGATION OF THE MURDER OF JOHN F. KENNEDY
Full disclosure. I spend every November 22nd watching Oliver Stone’s JFK. Partly because it is so visually arresting, partly for the compelling story, and partly for the nostalgia I have for my childhood home of New Orleans. It doesn’t matter that I knew even before first seeing it that Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner in full… Read More »
MY SUMMER AS A GOTH
MY SUMMER AS A GOTH ticks all the right boxes for a YA story designed to offer the comfort of the familiar in a framework that sets up a gaggle of paper tigers for the heroine (and her audience) to confront. A brooding bad boy, a dangerous bad boy, and a tempestuous mother-daughter relationship provide… Read More »
I AM LISA
One can approach I AM LISA as a very cool horror film in which the power structure is challenged by the supernatural. One can also approach it as a scathingly brilliant dialectic on feminism in several of its waves. Either way one comes away from this deliciously atmospheric, intellectually nimble excursion into lycanthropy, wildly entertained… Read More »
J.R. ‘BOB’ DOBBS AND THE CHURCH OF THE SUBGENIUS
Though J.R. ‘BOB’ DOBBS AND THE CHURCH OF THE SUBGENIUS throws in that now infamous quote from L. Ron Hubbard, the one about how the real money is in starting a religion not writing science fiction, this (mostly) playful, always thoughtful documentary is an unusual cautionary tale, but not for the usual reasons. Yes, it’s… Read More »
THE WAR WITH GRANDPA
Amid the stale jokes and flat direction to be found in THE WAR WITH GRANDPA, one is subjected to cartoonish takes on elder abuse, child abuse, and I’m pretty sure that the bass didn’t enjoy its time during the fishing sequence. Based on the book of the same name by Robert Kimmel Smith, the film… Read More »
THE GLORIAS
Click here for the flashback interview with Julianne Moore for FREEHELD. Julie Taymor, a visionary director if there ever was one, has done more than merely work around the inherent artificiality of the cinematic biopic. Rather, she has used it to excellent advantage in THE GLORIAS, a consideration of the life, and political education, of… Read More »
MULAN
There are several volumes of sophisticated feminist theory at work in the live-action version of MULAN, but, trust me, they are wholly in the service of a first-rate action-adventure film that puts characters ahead of spectacle. Director Niki Caro has created a film that is intense, compelling, and entirely entertaining, while Liu Yifei as the… Read More »
THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD
Armando Iannucci, a man possessing a preternatural gift for telling serious stories with a puckish twist, has taken on the classic Dickens tale of David Copperfield, and infused it with sparkling new life while remaining true to the original’s spirit. After all, despite his sometimes cloying sentimentality, Dickens spared his readers nothing when describing the… Read More »
BOYS STATE
As some of us still ponder the results of the presidential election of 2016, and view the approach of the 2020 election with trepidation, there is no more timely nor illuminating film than Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss’ cinema verité documentary, BOY’S STATE.
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