THE SURFER is a sundrenched, blood-soaked examination of toxic masculinity and generational trauma that hearkens back to the symbolist dramas of the 60s and 70s with its surreal overtones and pointed commentary. It is also the kind of film for which Nicolas Cage was gifted to us by the universe. If for no other reason,… Read More »
A DIFFERENT MAN
Hell, opined Sartre, is other people, and I am not here to argue with that. I am here to note that filmmaker Aaron Schimberg has made an excellent counterpoint to that idea with A DIFFERENT MAN, an engrossing trip to Hades that is archly, and self-referentially metaphorical as it discovers that Hell is also oneself.… Read More »
INSIDE
If INSIDE were a short film, anything up to the Academy™ definition of same, which is to say, 40 minutes or less including the credits, it would be an incisive deconstruction of art as commerce rather than aesthetics driven by a powerful performance by Willem Dafoe. Instead, it runs for 1 hour and 45 minutes,… Read More »
EMILY
EMILY begins with its titular character, Emily Brontë (Emma Mackey) swooning. It’s a cleverly deceptive beginning to the story of a 19th-century rebel, and of the inspirations for her masterpiece of gothic fiction, Wuthering Heights. As played by Mackey, with an immersive and experiential script by screenwriter, Frances O’Connor, Emily is anything but the delicate,… Read More »
THE CARD COUNTER
With THE CARD COUNTER, writer/director Paul Schraeder returns to his favorite themes of sin and redemption. This is no tidy tale of a fall from grace precipated by a rash decision or a moment of weakness. We have at the center a flawed man with dark impulses that he cannot control once they have been… Read More »
NIGHTMARE ALLEY
Flames are never far from Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), starting with those lapping near, but not too near, his heels as he exits the house that he’s just set alight over the body he’s deposited beneath the floorboards. In Guillermo del Toro’s oneiric vision of William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel, NIGHTMARE ALLEY. Notice, too, the… Read More »
THE HUNT
No one is spared in Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof’s THE HUNT, nor, as, will be revealed by the end, should they be. Our intrepid filmmakers have eschewed taking sides in the current political morass, instead opting for a more challenging take on the foibles of human nature itself. A bold move guaranteed to raise… Read More »
THE SOUNDING — Catherine Eaton and Teddy Sears Interview
I sometimes warn the people I’m interviewing that I have a tendency to read way too much into things. When I did that before starting my phone conversation with Catherine Easton and Teddy Sears on March 3, 2017 about their film, THE SOUNDING, they both assured me that everything I read into the film was… Read More »
Mitchell Lichtenstein Sharpens His TEETH
If there is any truth to the old saying that any publicity is good publicity, Mitchell Lichtenstein is on to something with his feature film debut, TEETH. The writer/director and erstwhile actor decided to go beyond the metaphor of the vagina dentata, and deal directly with that myth, the one that has haunted men though… Read More »