Since last November, we’ve been asked to understand, if not necessarily sympathize with, the furious resentments of the racists, misogynists, homophobes and plutocrats who have brought us to this point of political calamity. The fifth season of Orange Is the New Black (Netflix) appears to be its own kind of…
Megan Leavey is a war picture, but the scenes of combat, while suitably tense, are not its selling point. Instead, the film, based on a true story, follows aimless young Leavey (Kate Mara), who in 2003 leaves home to become a Marine. Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite condenses the scenes of boot…
A red door is, biblically speaking, a sign of protection, an echo of the blood rubbed on posts and lintels during Passover to keep God from smiting you and your home. But like most things that the Bible insists are positive, the red door also comes with an undercurrent of…
The Oak Cliff Film Festival crew is sitting in the back of Wild Detectives, bantering over the recent uptick in interest for slow-core Soviet cinema. They just showed Tarkovsky’s Stalker, a challenging piece of stitched-up long shots, and each has theories on why the crowds were so large. One thing…
The trailer for Henry Koster’s 1952 adaptation of My Cousin Rachel channels hysteria as the voiceover asks, “Was she woman or witch? Madonna or murderess?” Unfortunately, the film itself proved far tamer than the marketing suggested. The novel’s author, Daphne du Maurier, who also penned The Birds and the psychological…
The 2017 Cannes Film Festival wrapped up last Sunday with a slate of generally predictable (and perfectly worthwhile) awards. And while it may have been a somewhat lackluster year for the festival’s main competition, there were plenty of cinematic treasures to be found on the Croisette – even a couple…
It’s summer! Time to stay inside and watch TV! Duh! I’m Dying Up Here (Showtime), June 4 Peak TV giveth, and Peak TV taketh away. And sometimes Peak TV confuses the shit outta ye. Case in point: this new drama about LA’s stand-up comedy scene in the ’70s. I mean,…
For some reason, I can’t bring myself to hate Jim Brockmire. Played by comedian Hank Azaria, best known for his voice work on The Simpsons, Brockmire wears a perpetually wounded and somewhat confused expression, the look of a man coming off a bender who can’t find his car. His loud,…
I’m Dying Up Here premieres June 4 on Showtime Mythologies are built on pain. It’s why nations remember the invasions they’ve suffered better than the ones they’ve perpetrated, why religions celebrate their martyrs, and why Disney princesses – among the most privileged individuals in their respective kingdoms – sing about…
Imagine a remake of Cape Fear shot like Kubrick’s The Shining, with Max Cady recast as a child, and you’ll have some idea of the strangeness of Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer. The film has quickly proved to be one of the most divisive titles at this…
With his bow-legged power-walk, low-boil narcissism and tough-guy snarl, Brad Pitt is the comic ghost in David Michod’s all-too-real War Machine. The film, which is premiering on Netflix this week (and also getting an extremely limited theatrical release), was inspired by the late Michael Hastings’s book The Operators: The Wild…
Solid rule of thumb: Never accept strawberries from strangers on the street, no matter how good-looking the fruit or well-spoken the unknown person. But maybe that’s just me. For Clare (Teresa Palmer), the intrepid Australian backpacker who in Berlin Syndrome finds herself imprisoned in a Berlin apartment by a romantic…
There will always be, it’s become clear, one more Winston Churchill story to tell: one more slant on a weekend, a summer, a year in the life of the 20th century’s most formidable leader, a man whose history includes two world wars and speeches so glorious that future dramatizations were…
Perhaps Wonder Woman’s greatest superpower is enduring for the past 75 years as a wildly unstable signifier. Director Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman, starring Gal Gadot in the title role, further adds to this complicated, contradictory cluster of signs and symbols. Forged from deeply feminist sympathies, the character debuted in All…
In 2015, House of Cards’ fourth season had President Francis Underwood (Kevin Spacey) confessing a murder to his secretary of state, ICO (the series’ fictional ISIS) beheading a guy on live TV, lone journalist Tom Hammerschmidt (Boris McGiver) dogging the president with corruption charges, data scientist Aidan MacAllan (Damian Young)…
When Dallas film commissioner Janis Burklund left her office Tuesday, she was “90 percent sure” that 20th Century Fox would stay in Dallas to shoot its new Marvel Comics series The Gifted later this summer, she says. By Wednesday morning, that percentage dropped to zero. The team behind the dramatic…
Baywatch kinda baffled me. This R-rated comedy adaptation of the cheesy but sincere beach-set action series — which somehow became a worldwide phenomenon in the 1990s — is a movie that should be as enjoyably ridiculous as its source material. In some instances, it is. Director Seth Gordon (Horrible Bosses)…
At the end of many movies, there’s a blooper reel of goofy mistakes by the actors, played up for the rest of the cast and crew. Patrick Read Johnson, the director of films such as Spaced Invaders and Baby’s Day Out, says that if his autographical biopic, 5-25-77, had a blooper…
In 2008, the National Academy of Sciences saw an opening for outreach: Get real science in the movies. And by November of that year, it had begun the Science and Entertainment Exchange, which offered a way for Hollywood to link up with scientists to advise and consult on projects. Dr…
In the run-up to this year’s festival, Bong Joon-ho’s Okja was one of the most mysterious titles in the Official Selection lineup. Now that people have seen it, Okja has turned out to be…one of the most mysterious titles in the Official Selection lineup. What is it, exactly? A children’s…
“I can’t ensure I will not be disappeared in the future,” Joshua Wong says, deep into Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower, Joe Piscatella’s rousing, terrifying thriller of a documentary. He says it a little distractedly, as though his own life is an afterthought when considered against the scope of his movement…
Where are the goddamned roles for Diane Lane? Since her career launched, with a starring role as a precocious 13-year-old American girl in Paris in 1979’s A Little Romance, Lane seems to have confounded casting directors: Is she the button-nosed embodiment of joie de vivre or the anarchist post-punk tempest…
