Click here for the flashback interview with RJ Cutler for THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE. Early on in R.J. Cutler’s documentary, BELUSHI, Harold Ramis talks about John Belushi’s enormous appetites for everything. It would be his downfall, the appetite for drugs, that is, but Cutler smartly focuses on the other appetites, the enormous ambition, and also the… Read More »
TRUTH IS THE ONLY CLIENT: THE OFFICIAL INVESTIGATION OF THE MURDER OF JOHN F. KENNEDY
Full disclosure. I spend every November 22nd watching Oliver Stone’s JFK. Partly because it is so visually arresting, partly for the compelling story, and partly for the nostalgia I have for my childhood home of New Orleans. It doesn’t matter that I knew even before first seeing it that Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner in full… Read More »
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
It’s possible that a working knowledge of Canadian culture and politics might annotate the sheer joy of watching Matthew Rankin’s THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, but a lack of same in no way diminishes it. This rapturously surreal romp through fascism, propaganda, and the perils of love delights in its arch embrace of retro-futuristic artifice and vintage… Read More »
MY SUMMER AS A GOTH
MY SUMMER AS A GOTH ticks all the right boxes for a YA story designed to offer the comfort of the familiar in a framework that sets up a gaggle of paper tigers for the heroine (and her audience) to confront. A brooding bad boy, a dangerous bad boy, and a tempestuous mother-daughter relationship provide… Read More »
I AM LISA
One can approach I AM LISA as a very cool horror film in which the power structure is challenged by the supernatural. One can also approach it as a scathingly brilliant dialectic on feminism in several of its waves. Either way one comes away from this deliciously atmospheric, intellectually nimble excursion into lycanthropy, wildly entertained… Read More »
J.R. ‘BOB’ DOBBS AND THE CHURCH OF THE SUBGENIUS
Though J.R. ‘BOB’ DOBBS AND THE CHURCH OF THE SUBGENIUS throws in that now infamous quote from L. Ron Hubbard, the one about how the real money is in starting a religion not writing science fiction, this (mostly) playful, always thoughtful documentary is an unusual cautionary tale, but not for the usual reasons. Yes, it’s… Read More »
SPUTNIK
As is traditional in one of the more intriguing sub-genres of speculative fiction, the most dangerous monsters of SPUTNIK turn out to be the ones that didn’t come from outer space. That is the only standard trope to be found in this lean and lyric film from Russia, though, as it takes a sober look… Read More »
THE SUNLIT NIGHT
Thus begins her journey, artistic and literal, in this understated yet study of art and life that is sharp, uncompromising, and suffused with mordant humor amid the tragedies and quirks of la vie quotidienne.
7500
7500, the code used for hijackings, takes the all-too-familiar tropes of a terrorist hijacking and reframes them with a harrowing story that unfolds in real time. By removing any hint of sensationalism from the events, filmmaker Patrick Vollrath focuses on the moment-to-moment uncertainty of people ripped in an instant from the security of their familiar… Read More »
CRYPTOPIA: BITCOIN, BLOCKCHAINS AND THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET
A lively, cinematic page-turner of a documentary, CRYPTOPIA: BITCOIN, BLOCKCHAINS AND THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET, takes us on a rollicking journey through the history of Bitcoin: its detractors, its disciples, and its philosophers.
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