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 »
INCREDIBLE BUT TRUE (INCROYABLE MAIS VRAI)
One of the many delightful things about Quentin Dupieux’s films is that they do not waste our time. They are a marvel of economy while at the same time seriously introducing a wealth of bemusing ideas in their tightly written, superbly absurd plots. And so it is with INCREDIBLE BUT TRUE (INCROYABLE MAI VRAI), a… Read More »