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Author

Showing 23 - 44 of 395

Alan Scherstuhl

Alan Scherstuhl is film editor and writer at Voice Media Group. VMG publications include Denver Westword, Miami New Times, Phoenix New Times, Dallas Observer, Houston Press and New Times Broward-Palm Beach.

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<i>Boy Erased</i> Exposes the Cruel Stupidity of “Gay Conversion Therapy”

Boy Erased Exposes the Cruel Stupidity of “Gay Conversion Therapy”

By Alan ScherstuhlNovember 7, 2018

It documents with an incisive drabness the group sessions, garbled sermons and general shoddiness of Love in Action, the program that 19-year-old Jared (Lucas Hedges) gets enrolled in by his parents, played by Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe

Paul Dano’s <i>Wildlife</i> Is a Superb Drama of a Fracturing American Family

Paul Dano’s Wildlife Is a Superb Drama of a Fracturing American Family

By Alan ScherstuhlNovember 2, 2018

The couple has begun to discover that raw truth that, around 1960, American novelists and filmmakers were only starting to face in their art: that the post-war dream of a little house and a little family just might not be enough to ensure happiness

The Corny Wiki-like Biopic <i>Bohemian Rhapsody</i> Can’t Dim Freddie Mercury’s Star

The Corny Wiki-like Biopic Bohemian Rhapsody Can’t Dim Freddie Mercury’s Star

By Alan ScherstuhlNovember 1, 2018

It’s one of those biopics where everything significant that happened to a famous person happens all at once, in the couple of seconds of any given year that we see dramatized

Netflix’s <i>The Dragon Prince</i> Is a Fantasy Knockout, but Its <i>Disenchantment</i> Is a Slog

Netflix’s The Dragon Prince Is a Fantasy Knockout, but Its Disenchantment Is a Slog

By Alan ScherstuhlOctober 18, 2018

Netflix has recently offered two modest stabs at this stabbing-est of genres, a pair of animated series, one of which bristles with promise

Thanksgiving-Ruining Comedy <i>The Oath</i> Makes America Funny Again

Thanksgiving-Ruining Comedy The Oath Makes America Funny Again

By Alan ScherstuhlOctober 18, 2018

That impulse — to continually stoke our fury with Twitter takes, cable news shouters and breaking news updates — gets lanced throughout The Oath, which writer-director-star Barinholtz has set in a now just as fevered as ours

Maggie Gyllenhaal Tests Viewers’ Capacity for Cringing in <i>The Kindergarten Teacher</i>

Maggie Gyllenhaal Tests Viewers’ Capacity for Cringing in The Kindergarten Teacher

By Alan ScherstuhlOctober 12, 2018

The teacher in question, played by an excellent Maggie Gyllenhaal, takes an insistent interest in the life and (apparent) art of 5-year-old student Jimmy (Parker Sevak), who occasionally goes into a shuffling trance and mumble-recites evocative verses of his own invention

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The Flashy <i>Studio 54</i> Keeps Too Much That Matters Behind the Velvet Rope

The Flashy Studio 54 Keeps Too Much That Matters Behind the Velvet Rope

By Alan ScherstuhlOctober 12, 2018

Footage of Studio life — the lavish lights, the Broadway-style props and performance numbers, the heaving mass of beautiful people — plays here mostly in chaotic montage, with few shots related to the one coming next

<i>The Hate U Give</i> Gives Powerful Voice to a Young Woman’s Outrage

The Hate U Give Gives Powerful Voice to a Young Woman’s Outrage

By Alan ScherstuhlOctober 11, 2018

The Hate U Give takes time to focus on the nuances of Starr’s life, on the ways Williamson has split her consciousness, on the effort of code-switching, on the layers of self that Starr must sort through in everyday interactions

Clever but Empty, <i>Bad Times</i> Throws Back to the Tarantinoid ’90s

Clever but Empty, Bad Times Throws Back to the Tarantinoid ’90s

By Alan ScherstuhlOctober 5, 2018

Bad Times is a much better time in its mysterious middle, which tingles with darkly comic possibility, than in its final 40 minutes, when Goddard’s cards are on the table

Rock-Climbing Doc <i>Free Solo</i> Thrills and Terrifies

Rock-Climbing Doc Free Solo Thrills and Terrifies

By Alan ScherstuhlOctober 5, 2018

The filmmakers capture Honnold’s 2016 and 2017 attempts to complete the first “free solo” climb of these granite cliffs, and the suspense is thrilling, agonizing, perhaps indecent

Alonso Ruizpalacios’ <i>Museo</i> Is Year’s Best and Most Existential Heist Film

Alonso Ruizpalacios’ Museo Is Year’s Best and Most Existential Heist Film

By Alan ScherstuhlOctober 5, 2018

Its centerpiece is a breathless break-in at the National Anthropology Museum in Mexico City, as two 30ish suburbanites, played by Gael Garcia Bernal and Leonardo Ortizgris, attempt to loot artifacts from what is known as the Mayan room

<i>Loving Pablo</i> Offers a Giddily Ridiculous Look at Pablo Escobar’s Rise and Fall

Loving Pablo Offers a Giddily Ridiculous Look at Pablo Escobar’s Rise and Fall

By Alan ScherstuhlOctober 4, 2018

Double-stuffed with kill squads, killer ’80s couture, and mood-killing howlers, Fernando Leon de Aranoa’s Loving Pablo is more a greatest hits than a story, the kind of radically compressed life-of-a-legend movie where everything happens in a giddy, ridiculous gush

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Tamara Jenkins’ <i>Private Life</i> Is the Best Reason This Year to Keep Your Netflix

Tamara Jenkins’ Private Life Is the Best Reason This Year to Keep Your Netflix

By Alan ScherstuhlOctober 4, 2018

Its leads, feminist writer Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) and Richard (Paul Giamatti), a one-time wunderkind of no-budget theatrical productions, find themselves desperate to conceive a child even as the doctors they pay (with borrowed money) thousands to speak frankly of the odds

Robert Redford Twinkles as <i>The Old Man & the Gun</i>’s Career Crook

Robert Redford Twinkles as The Old Man & the Gun’s Career Crook

By Alan ScherstuhlOctober 4, 2018

Each beat of this plays out with exquisite delicacy, as does the exchange where the crook lays out, with exacting detail, how he’d rob this diner if it were a bank — and then takes it all back, letting her think he was joking

Keira Knightley’s <i>Colette</i> Storms Paris and All the Rules of Sexuality

Keira Knightley’s Colette Storms Paris and All the Rules of Sexuality

By Alan ScherstuhlSeptember 28, 2018

As her marriage opens up, and Colette begins to take lovers of her own, Knightley summons up a moving sense of both relief and recklessness

France’s <i>The Apparition</i> Makes a Fine Mystery Out of a Sighting of Mary

France’s The Apparition Makes a Fine Mystery Out of a Sighting of Mary

By Alan ScherstuhlSeptember 28, 2018

Young Anna (Galatea Bellugi), intense and charismatic in the manner of another teenaged French seer, reports that Mary has imparted to her a message calling for the building of a church and caring for the world’s poor

The Online Mob Gets Bloody Literal in <i>Assassination Nation</i>

The Online Mob Gets Bloody Literal in Assassination Nation

By Alan ScherstuhlSeptember 21, 2018

Despite the killing-spree craziness of its final reels, much of the film is a how-the-kids-live-now potboiler, replete with guileless dirty talk and immense bedroom windows that seem to have been installed with peeping in mind

<i>The House With a Clock in Its Walls</i> Is Just the Right Kind of Scary

The House With a Clock in Its Walls Is Just the Right Kind of Scary

By Alan ScherstuhlSeptember 20, 2018

Roth’s film is a funhouse throwback, a scare-the-kids goof with a top-shelf cast, an antique shop’s worth of creepy windup dolls and more heart than you might expect — and, like those jack-o’-lanterns, it’s got more teeth, too

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The Irrepressible <i>Science Fair</i> Charms and Pleases — But What About the Science?

The Irrepressible Science Fair Charms and Pleases — But What About the Science?

By Alan ScherstuhlSeptember 14, 2018

The cameras aren’t even there when the kids officially present their projects, but the filmmakers still wring the big day for all the drama they can, putting off as long as possible the revelation of whether any of their subjects win

<i>Love, Gilda</i> Lets Gilda Radner Speak for Herself

Love, Gilda Lets Gilda Radner Speak for Herself

By Alan ScherstuhlSeptember 14, 2018

Radner narrates, in a way, through her own audio diaries, plus some snippets of interviews and judicious excerpts from the audiobook of her perfectly titled — and just-barely posthumous — memoir, It’s Always Something

<i>White Boy Rick</i>’s Heart Is in Family, Not the Crack Game

White Boy Rick’s Heart Is in Family, Not the Crack Game

By Alan ScherstuhlSeptember 13, 2018

White Boy Rick has reams of story to tear through, but at heart it’s a family drama, one more concerned with the Wershes than with crack, the feds or Detroit itself

The Gloriously Lurid <i>Mandy</i> Knows Just What to Do With Nicolas Cage

The Gloriously Lurid Mandy Knows Just What to Do With Nicolas Cage

By Alan ScherstuhlSeptember 13, 2018

Cosmatos delivers (as fans say) on the blood and guts, on cathartic slaughter, on the disreputable pleasure of watching a bereaved hero regard a new weapon and envision nasty uses for it

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