A little game I play while watching very bad movies is imagining the joy I will have during the later conversation that I will have about it with John Wilson, Founder and Head Berry of the Golden Raspberry Awards Foundation during our annual interview. The Razzies, as their award is known, even has a special… Read More »
ON THE COUNT OF THREE
Jerrod Carmichal is a quietly compelling presence in his directorial debut, ON THE COUNT OF THREE. As Val, half of a suicidal duo out to make the last day of their lives count for something, or at least to make it a day less depressing than the ones that have so far rounded out their… Read More »
MEMORY
Based on the delightfully quirky 2003 Belgian film, The Memory of a Killer, MEMORY has the makings of a solid neo-noir. Alas, rather than a tight script to match its excellent visual acuity, MEMORY rambles too much before leading us down the familiar path of corruption in high places and the loss of innocence across… Read More »
THE NORTHMAN
Those familiar with HAMLET will find some familiar things in Robert Eggers’ THE NORTHMAN, and that is no coincidence. The source material for both is Sjón’s Gesta Danorum (circa 1200) about a prince with both mommy issues and a usurping uncle. Where Shakespeare adapted the story to his time creating an elegantly and eloquently melancholy… Read More »
THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT
Having starred in a deliciously odd self-portrait by and of Charlie Kaufman, ADAPTATION, Nicolas Cage has waited two decades to take the surreal meta-plunge again and waiting for just the right script has paid off for him and for us. In THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT, he plays a fictionalized version of himself, hamstrung… Read More »
AMBULANCE
If Michael Bay is smart, and having a long career as, essentially, a one-trick pony, leads us to believe he must be, he will cast Olivia Stambouliah in all his films from now on. As Lieutenant Dhazghig, the crack surveillance officer in charge of keeping track of where the rogue, and eponymous subject of Bay’s… Read More »
X
What we have here with X is a good, old-fashioned slice-’em-up homage to 1970s grindhouse flicks. Specifically, 1979, wherein we find Maxine (Mia Goth), she of the constellation of a birthmark over one eye, determined to escape the drab life of a stripper in the even drabber boondocks of Texas. Thanks to her boyfriend Wayne… Read More »
SUNDOWN
Potent and deliberately enigmatic, Michel Franco’ SUNDOWN doesn’t so much tell a story as put a mirror up to its audience. With a central character that never explains, only exists with his own imperturbable agenda, it is for us to project our own ideas onto him as we sort out the mysteries of his actions… Read More »
SCREAM
In a film that is dedicated to self-reference and meta self-awareness, my favorite snippet of SCREAM is a throwaway reference to “that guy who directed KNIVES OUT”. That, of course, is Rian Johnson, who had previously worked on THE LAST JEDI, thereby drawing the wrath of a section of Star Wars fans of all persuasions,… Read More »
THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH
It is as though Denzel Washington wanted his performance as the title character in Joel Coen’s THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH were conceived and executed as a tribute to the famous sleepwalking scene played by Lady Macbeth. He speaks the lines not trippingly from the tongue, but rather mumbled with little emotional affect, albeit with admirable… Read More »
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