It’s hard to imagine a more fascinating place on earth than Chile. If we had to pick one country to show an alien race what varying geographical features our planet has to offer, it would probably be that country. It has more than 4,000 kilometers of coastline and the highest volcano and part of the […]
Even if you’ve read Emma Donoghue’s 2010 novel Room or already heard about this film adaptation, there is little chance that too much foreknowledge will lessen the story’s complexity. At the recent Toronto International Film Festival, it was perhaps the most talked about selection; I couldn’t cover my ears in time before I found out […]
This masterful balancing act of docudrama and morality tragedy is set in 2010, but we aren’t given that date until more than halfway through. It doesn’t matter, as the events of the film—taking place in Orlando, Florida—could be taking place right now. This goes to show how in the moment and forceful Ramin Bahrani’s fifth […]
(The writer of this review in no way intends to injure relations between the Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia.) In recent years, natural disasters, violent atrocities, and political turmoil have been wrestling for headlines and the public’s attention. Any one instance of bad news becomes painfully easy to forget in a world of trending stories scrolled […]
It recently came out that the story of James B. Donovan, a Brooklyn lawyer who negotiated the release of American spy plane pilot Gary Francis Powers from the Soviet Union in 1960, was almost made into a 1965 movie starring Gregory Peck as Donovan. That would have made perfect sense—the role is about as morally […]
Embarrassingly, the first Tab Hunter film I ever saw was Grease 2 (1982). He played the hunky biology teacher opposite his longtime costar Connie Stevens. It wasn’t until many years later when I saw him in John Waters’s Polyester (1981), and even then I didn’t really understand his pop cultural significance. The documentary Tab Hunter […]
Writer, producer, and director Michael Almereyda is one of the more exciting filmmakers working today. He is interested in serious, intellectual themes, adapting Shakespeare in Cymbeline earlier this year or dramatizing the life and work of famed social scientist Stanley Milgram in his latest film, Experimenter. Yet Almereyda is not so much paying homage to […]
Gimmicks and tricks have been around since the birth of cinema, whether it be Cinemascope, 3-D, or Smell-o-Vision (thank you, John Waters). The ones that stood the test of time generally enhance the overall cinematic experience. Others, such as the Dogme 95 movement and, please God, found footage films, fade into the collective memory of […]
The makers of The Final Girls pull of an admirable trick. They present a credible, genial spoof of 1980’s slasher flicks while successfully incorporating a sentimental yet credible theme of appreciating and letting go of grief. It’s impressive and gives the movie more heft than most of the joke-a-minute spoofs that, say, the Wayans brothers […]