Bob Odenkirk has slipped comfortably into the category of unlikely action hero. Just an ordinary guy who, when thrown into extraordinary circumstances, rises to the occasion with a deadpan quip and a lethal ability to stay alive. And so it is with NORMAL, his follow-up to NOBODY and NOBODY 2, wherein he essays Ulysses, a… Read More »
SEND HELP
The fruits of entitlement face off with workers controlling the means of production in Sam Raimi’s scathingly brilliant, and wickedly funny, take on gender politics and economic power, SEND HELP. Sure, we’ve seen this scenario before in THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON, SWEPT AWAY (the Wertmuller version, please), and most recently in TRIANGLE OF SADNESS, which owes… Read More »
NO OTHER CHOICE
NO OTHER CHOICE is a refrain that will echo throughout Park Chan-wook’s film of the same name. It is more than just the desperation of a man fired from his job overseeing the manufacture of specialty papers at a paper mill. That is merely the framework for Park to contemplate the changing economy, the difference… Read More »
AMERICAN DREAMS (WAS DEMOCRACY JUST A DREAM?) from the San Francisco Mime Troupe
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 »