Kierkegaard, noted Existentialist and proto-Absurdist, once opined that life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. As a cinematic exploration of the tragic and comedic implications of that, there is Dennis Hauck’s wistful neo-Noir, TOO LATE, a film that employs a strategic insouciance as it nimbly plays with the time/space continuum… Read More »
THEY LOOK LIKE PEOPLE
THEY LOOK LIKE PEOPLE is a first-rate existential horror film, as well as a psychological thriller. Writer/director Perry Blackshear understands more than just how to create evocative, even sumptuous, visuals, he knows how to use those visuals in the service of telling a story that is as emotionally engrossing as it is suspenseful while it explores the… Read More »
YOU’RE KILLING ME
YOU’RE KILLING ME is a wry and delightful black comedy of very bad manners, of which murder may not be the most heinous. In it, a group of hip twenty-somethings on the fringes of show biz negotiate awkward game nights, the finer points of dating etiquette, and the protocols of disposing of a dead body.… Read More »
THE CLUB (El Club)
Near the beginning of THE CLUB, a shot rings out and the ramifications of that sound will echo throughout this quietly intense film about accepting guilt and attempting redemption. It happens shortly after a new resident arrives at a secluded house on the windswept Chilean coast where priests live cloistered an apart from the world… Read More »
STRANGER BY THE LAKE
There is no getting around the prurient interest that STRANGER BY THE LAKE evokes. Set entirely on the rocky shore of the titular lake, it teems with beautiful young men madly in lust both with each other and with being in a state of nature. It is the stuff of porn flicks and of classical… Read More »
FLOWERS (Loreak)
A sweet melancholia pervades FLOWERS. The juxtaposition of life’s relentless move forward and the cryptic nature of human identity that confounds, delights, and charms work in tandem in this quietly powerful and unconventional love story. Moving on is the theme that ties the two tangential storylines together. In the first, Ane (Nagore Aranburu) learns that… Read More »
QUEEN OF EARTH
When we first see Catherine (Elizabeth Moss), she appears to be melting. Mascara and eyeliner running down her face. Her hair dripping. She is reacting to a breakup. Badly. The camera clings to her distorted face as she reels from the news apparently just delivered by her boyfriend, James (Kentucker Audley) and is by turns… Read More »
EVERY THING WILL BE FINE
Tragedy is complicated. Guilt and anger, acceptance and forgiveness don’t fall into neat pigeonholes in Wim Wender’s EVERY THING WILL BE FINE, a title that is what everyone aspires to in this small but powerful tale of searching for redemption. The central character is Tomas (James Franco), a good writer with a middling career and… Read More »
THE FORBIDDEN ROOM
To see a Guy Maddin film is to have the disconcerting experience of having the horrors of the commonplace revealed. With the most delicate shifting of perspective, and by only a few metaphorical millimeters, hitherto unsuspected absurdities are made manifest, resulting in a comedy to give you nightmares, and nightmares to make you howl with… Read More »
THE CREEPING GARDEN
THE CREEPING GARDEN is a documentary that successfully challenges everything we thought we knew about life on earth. The result is both fascinating and discomfiting, not unlike its subject, the slime mold, a life form that confounds all attempts to classify it as animal, vegetable, or fungal. It moves from place to place on its… Read More »