I’m not giving anything away to tell you the punch line in Gillian Wallace Horvat’s I BLAME SOCIETY. It’s a perfectly timed, and even more perfectly delivered explanation about the film her character made in the course of this vicious, and viciously funny satire: I’m sorry it didn’t meet your expectations, I didn’t make it… Read More »
ANTEBELLUM
Of the many neat twists in ANTEBELLUM, the most disturbing of all is the one that concerns the state of race relations in the modern day, and how slavery still informs it. By contrasting the subtle, and not so subtle, micro-aggressions forced upon people of color in the present with the brutality of slavery as… Read More »
Bel Powley and Marielle Heller Share THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL
When I spoke with Bel Powely and Marielle Heller on August 3, 2015, the subject was, of course, sex. Their film, THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL, addresses that issues from the first scene, wherein the heroine, 15-year-old Minnie Goetz, proudly tells the audience that she’s just had sex and it was >amazing<. I started… Read More »
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD
George Miller first sent Mad Max blazing across the sere post-apocalyptic landscape in 1979 and thence onto cinematic legend. Sequels followed. Mel Gibson in the eponymous role rose to international fame and, eventually, Miller moved on to different sorts of classics with BABE and HAPPY FEET. Now, thirty years and more later, he is revisiting… Read More »