Click here for the interview with Andre Amarotico. The San Francisco Mime Troupe once again comes through with a thought-provoking musical comedy about the state of the nation with AMERICAN DREAMS (WAS DEMOCRACY JUST A DREAM?). The tripartite focus is on what the fallout will be from the 2024 election, and what is happening now… Read More »
PROBLEMISTA
There is so much to admire about Julio Torres’s PROBLEMISTA, from its magnificent manifestations of metaphor to its tweaking of subjective norms and random exploitation in a provocative satire as dark as night, but as hopeful as a buoyant full moon. The one that reigns supreme, though, is what Torres has done with the desperate,… Read More »
THE MONK AND THE GUN
Sooner or later, everyone in THE MONK AND THE GUN asks the obvious question. What would a monk want with a gun? The monk in this case is a Bhutanese Buddhist Lama, and he is about to break his meditation retreat two years early in order to perform a ritual that will need one. Actually,… Read More »
SALTBURN
Click here to listen to the interview with Emerald Fennell. It is fitting that SALTBURN starts with a flame. Emerald Fennell’s black comedy of a sophomore effort is, after all, a scorched earth approach to class warfare, and one that then proceeds to rub metaphorical salt in the wounds said warfare engenders. That’s it’s also… Read More »
BREAKDOWN
As summer comes to a close, so does the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s 2023 season of free live performances of its scathingly scintillating production of BREAKDOWN. This year, you can also enjoy it as VOD here through 9/4, password PowerToThePeople!, yes the exclamation point is part of the password). Every year the Troupe takes on… Read More »
BARBIE
At one point in BARBIE, Greta Gerwig’s pink-plastic jab at the patriarchy, America Ferrara, as Gloria, an ordinary woman, gives an impassioned précis on exactly what women face in the current social climate. It is a clarion call that should reverberate through the ages and one that will, like the film in which it appears,… Read More »
SCREAM VI
The Scream franchise is not one that wants to be taken seriously as a straight horror film. From the first iconoclastic installment so many years ago, its aim, it’s very raison d’être, was to call out the conventions of slasher films and then serve up a gory slashfest to an audience primed to laugh at… Read More »
HONK FOR JESUS. SAVE YOUR SOUL.
HONK FOR JESUS. SAVE YOUR SOUL. is a deadly satire that exhibits a Christian compassion not always evident in its protagonists. Not that those protagonists have the self-awareness to register their lack of same. This satire finds much to mock when it comes to mega-churches and the gospel of prosperity, but it chooses to use… Read More »
MEDUSA
Anita Rocha da Silveira’s MEDUSA is a savage satire of self-enforced female repression. Set in an unnamed country that could be the filmmaker’s native Brazil, or any country with a vocal and fervent minority currently vying to bring Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale to life, it is a lushly metaphorical take on the kind of right-wing… Read More »
BODIES, BODIES, BODIES
BODIES, BODIES, BODIES answers the question “What if a group of friends, trapped in a house in the middle of nowhere, suddenly turned on each other?” Actually, the more salient question is what if a group of friends, with varying degrees of irritating personality disorders, found themselves in those circumstances, would anyone care who made… Read More »