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 »
JOHN AND THE HOLE
JOHN AND THE HOLE is a film that demands that its audience draw its own conclusions rather than spell out what has driven a 13-year-old boy to trap his family in an abandoned bunker. Dancing adroitly between reality and metaphor, this psychologically disturbing story is told in muted colors and hushed tones, the better to… Read More »
BACK TO BURGUNDY
BACK TO BURGUNDY’s original French title is less about returning home and more about the ties that bind one to that home. I leave the reasons for why movie titles are willfully mistranslated, but bring it up because THE TIES THAT BIND feels like a more accurate description of why a prodigal son finds it… Read More »
THE WAR WITH GRANDPA
Amid the stale jokes and flat direction to be found in THE WAR WITH GRANDPA, one is subjected to cartoonish takes on elder abuse, child abuse, and I’m pretty sure that the bass didn’t enjoy its time during the fishing sequence. Based on the book of the same name by Robert Kimmel Smith, the film… Read More »
THE TRUTH (La Vérité)
In Hirokazu Koreeda’s last film, the Oscar®-nominated SHOPLIFTERS, he incisively examined the ethics of capitalism, and its effects on one poverty-stricken, yet devoted, ragtag family ingeniously doing battle with a system designed to keep them down economically. In THE TRUTH, he moves the action from Tokyo to Paris to examine the ethics of veracity on… Read More »
US
There is much to unpack in Jordan Peele’s deeply disturbing, darkly funny horror film, US. As it twists and turns through its doppelganger premise, the scariest part of the action isn’t the fear of home invasion by strangers out for slow, painstaking revenge.
HEREDITY
The only thing wrong with HEREDITY is that is bound to spawn increasingly inferior installments in a new franchise that is as inevitable as its protagonists’ descent into madness. That aside, this deeply disturbing horror film does not need the supernatural in order to worm its way into the darkest recesses of your psyche where… Read More »
THE GLASS CASTLE — Jeannette Walls Interview
Jeannette Walls is a larger-than-life personality, brimming with energy and a ready laugh that fills a room. That she is still laughing after the childhood she describes in her best-selling memoir, THE GLASS CASTLE is a testament to her innate toughness, and to her ability to appreciate the wonder with which her eccentric parents imbued… Read More »
A QUIET PASSION — Terence Davies Interview
Terence Davies is a man of keen intellect and mordant wit who describes himself as one of life’s observers. His films, THE DEEP BLUE SEA, THE HOUSE OF MIRTH, his semi-autobiographical DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES, and OF TIME AND THE CITY, his documentary tribute to his hometown of Liverpool, which used Dickinson’s poetry as part… Read More »
THE RED TURTLE
We are reminded in THE RED TURTLE how superfluous words can be. This animated fable from Studio Ghibli, aimed more at adults than at children, is a thoughtful film about the cycle of life, and a sublime cinematic achievement. A masterpiece, in fact. Starting with a shipwreck, it tells the story of a castaway marooned… Read More »