Steven Soderbergh’s signature style is one of cool detachment to his characters. His films tackle people in crisis, but the tone is always one of an ersatz cinema verité witness to what is happening to them. In PRESENCE, he has channeled that aesthetic into a ghost story told from the spirit’s point of view. Literally.… Read More »
A COMPLETE UNKNOWN
The point is made several times in the course of A COMPLETE UNKNOWN that its subject, Bob Dylan is a complete jerk. In one particularly satisfying moment, Joan Baez tosses him out of her room at the fabled Chelsea Hotel calling him just that after he makes a booty call and then withdraws into the… Read More »
NOSFERATU
David Eggers, who has a vision of such specific originality and clarity that it might well become a horror subgenre at some point, has taken on not just one iconic film in NOSFERATU, but two, both of whose imagery have become part of the cultural landscape even for those who have never seen NOSFERATU (1922)… Read More »
A RED CAROL
Click here to listen to the interview with Michael Gene Sullivan. At this time of year, we are usually bombarded with works purporting to remind us of the real meaning of Christmas. At some point, Dickens’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL comes up with Tiny Tim’s plucky and heartfelt “God bless us, everyone,” and we are… Read More »
GLADIATOR II
GLADIATOR II has all the spectacle and pageantry (can you say cast of AI thousands?) of its predecessor, and certainly the same amount of gruesome deaths as only Ancient Rome could devise them, but it is a lesser thing story-wise. Not a bad film, but one that comes down firmly on the side of that… Read More »
HERETIC
HERETIC manages to be terrifying because of the very civility each of the characters shows during the slow build-up to the, ahem, crux of the film. This fable for our times is a cleverly disguised dialectic not just on faith, but on the very human need to believe in something in the face of proof,… Read More »
JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX
And so with JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX, we return to the tragedy that is Arthur Fleck and his abuse at the hands of a social safety net that failed him. As refracted through the prism of Arthur’s fractured psyche, and that of his alter ego, Joker, the world of Gotham City is a violent place… Read More »
A DIFFERENT MAN
Hell, opined Sartre, is other people, and I am not here to argue with that. I am here to note that filmmaker Aaron Schimberg has made an excellent counterpoint to that idea with A DIFFERENT MAN, an engrossing trip to Hades that is archly, and self-referentially metaphorical as it discovers that Hell is also oneself.… Read More »
MEGALOPOLIS
It feels like the right thing to do when reviewing MEGALOPOLIS: A FABLE is to wait for the director’s cut. It’s an impulse as fractured as the film itself considering that Francis Ford Coppola sank his own money into making this film and thereby had final cut. Still, for all the disjointed execution this frustrating… Read More »
SUPER/MAN: THE CHRISTOPHER REEVE STORY
SUPER/MAN: THE CHRISTOPHER REEVE STORY is a respectful and honest documentary about the actor who rose to fame as the Man of Steel and the accident that put him in a wheelchair. Using home movies and recollections by family members, it conveys both the profound courage Reeves showed in making himself a visible symbol of… Read More »
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