Men Go to Battle
By Hayden Jacoves July 8, 2016
At 98 minutes, this entertaining and quietly ambitious film never wears out its welcome and stays true to its small-scale intentions.
At 98 minutes, this entertaining and quietly ambitious film never wears out its welcome and stays true to its small-scale intentions.
The spirit of the Coen Brothers’ (arguably) best movie hovers over narrative entries in this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, with the director of one film even citing it as a direct influence.
Some sort of alien invasion may be transpiring as a result of a meteor strike, but the characters are already peculiar enough to be fairly alien themselves. When weird things happen to weird people, it feels almost expected, rather than unsettling.
A stylish, unique piece of speculative dystopian filmmaking, set in Brooklyn at some indeterminate time in the near future.
The cinematography, the subtly paced storytelling, and the doleful music score combine to form an artistic expression akin to free verse poetry.
As in the recent documentary Amy, questions of who has the right to tell a deceased musicians story come into stark question. (Fans? The family?) Tumbledown, from first-time feature director Sean Mewshaw, brings up a lot of arresting issues. A talented musician dies after releasing only one brilliant album, and as his widow struggles to […]
While some may balk at the arrival of yet another indie film delving into the angst of a twentysomething New York writer who broods and self-destructs, James White, the debut from writer-director Josh Mond, takes a slightly different tack that sets it apart. It stars Christopher Abbott of Girls fame. On that TV show, he […]
A foul, jarring, but effective little film, Stinking Heaven shoves our faces into the very toe jam of addicts struggling to achieve sobriety. Set in the 1990s and shot on some sort of Betamaxy videotape to give it that authentic, grimy ’90s feel, the film depicts daily life in a suburban New Jersey commune catering […]
Brooklyn hipsters living in their narcissistic bubble in gentrifying neighborhoods are a timely target for satire. Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Silva now lives in such a changing community, and his Nasty Baby is pitch-perfect at capturing his and his ilk’s worst pettiness, condescension, and isolation from those who came before them into their brave new politically […]