In PILLION, we learn a great deal about gay biker culture in the UK. This is to be expected in a film wherein a sweet man (Harry Melling) discovers a side of himself he never suspected after falling under the commanding spell of one of those ci-mentioned bikers (Alexander Skarsgård). What is unexpected is discovering… Read More »
WUTHERING HEIGHTS
Click here for the flashback interview with Emerald Fennell for SALTBURN. When Emily Bronte published WUTHERING HEIGHTS in 1847, it was hailed for its strangeness, its intensity, and its disquieting disquisition on obsession. Emerald Fennell, she of A PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN and SALTBURN, has taken Brontë’s novel and re-imagined it for modern audiences, recreating the… 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 »
THE CROW
The word that best describes THE CROW is moribund. Even during the ecstatic orgy of bloodletting that caps this reboot of Alex Proyas’ 1994 film, it is somnambulant as it goes through its paces charting the lengths to which true love can push a young man when faced with the devil. Or his charming associate… Read More »
IT ENDS WITH US
IT ENDS WITH US, based on the novel by Colleen Hoover, follows blandly in the grand tradition of the Women’s Films of Hollywood’s Golden Age. In it, we meet the effulgently monikered Lily Bloom, a woman with a troubled childhood who is returning home through the exquisite New England autumnal landscape to bury her father.… Read More »
MUSICA
Rudy Mancuso (played by . . . Rudy Mancuso) lives in a slightly different universe than the rest of us. Where we hear the rumble of city life, Rudy hears rhythm and music. Where we see people going about their daily lives, Rudy sees syncopated choreography. And that’s the universe that Mancuso, as director and… Read More »
THE LOST CITY
Let us praise the genius of Sandra Bullock’s gift for physical comedy. It makes even the small business of teetering on a stool in a fuchsia-sequined jumpsuit an epic of determination, embarrassment, grit, and uncertainty. It is in no small part that THE LOST CITY, on which she was also an executive producer, is such… Read More »
CYRANO
Joe Wright has a genius for taking the stories we know all too well and making them feel like a delightful new discovery. Seek no further than his take on ANNA KARENINA (interview here), which, pace fans of Garbo and Leigh, is my favorite adaptation of Tolstoy’s classic. Is it absolutely true to the source… Read More »
FINDING YOU
FINDING YOU is the quintessence of YA fiction brought to cinematic life. In it, our ordinary, yet winsome heroine, Finley Sinclair (Rose Reid) is pursued by a famous movie star, is the only hope of settling a decades-long family feud, and puts all the snooty girls in her orbit in their respective places. All while… Read More »
SENIOR MOMENT
If you are a Wiliiam Shater fanboy or girl, SENIOR MOMENT is the flick you’ve been waiting for. As an aging Lothario with a kooky sidekick (Christopher Lloyd), he oozes the Shatner brand of charm while skating through a predictable story about how Peter Pan finally grows up. He plays Victor, a senior citizen in… Read More »