THE LURE is a wickedly feminist revision of the Little Mermaid story, though our heroines are sirens, not mermaids. Sirens as in those enticing creatures that would lure sailors to their doom with their irresistible songs. In Homer’s The Odyssey, it was to see them shipwrecked, in THE LURE, it’s to dine on them. These hybrid… Read More »
SIX ROUNDS
SIX ROUNDS is an exquisitely realized inner monologue. A perfect distillation of character and mood expressed in silence and in shouts; of emotion visualized through quick cuts and slow motion into a tone poem of stark eloquence with nary a flaw in its running time. Told is six episodes, it explores the aftermath of the… Read More »
MIDSUMMER IN NEWTOWN
The word “safe” comes up over and over again in MIDSUMMER IN NEWTOWN, Lloyd Kramer’s elegiac yet emotionally gripping documentary about the aftereffects of the Sandy Hook Massacre on the survivors. As in, the sense of being safe has been taken from everyone involved forever. The question becomes how to deal with it. Kramer’s film… Read More »
THE BRAND NEW TESTAMENT (Le tout nouveau testament )
THE BRAND NEW TESTAMENT is a clever and wise deconstruction of dogma and patriarchy. Taking as its premise that God (Benoît Poelvoorde) is real, but less than benevolent, it gives us the story of his other child, the one who didn’t get her own book and who doesn’t like the status quo and takes it… Read More »
GOLDEN KINGDOM
Brian Perkins’ debut feature, GOLDEN KINGDOM, is a profoundly lyrical film about life, death, and spirituality. Set in a small rural Buddhist monastery in Myanmar, it’s the story of Ko Yin Witazara (Shine Htet Zaw), a boy monk who is put in charge of his three fellow boy monks when their abbot is called away… Read More »
TOWER
On August 1, 1966, a sniper took aim from the observation deck of the tower on the University of Texas campus at Austin and reigned 90 minutes of chaos and terror on the people below. TOWER, a partly animated documentary by Keith Maitland, tells that story in real time from the perspective of the eyewitnesses… Read More »
THE HANDMAIDEN (Ah-ga-ss)
Based on Sarah Water’s novel Fingersmith, Chan-Wook Park’s THE HANDMAIDEN hornswaggles its audience with its opening scenes, and then continues on for its running time to continually confound, shock, and gratify that same audience. Told in four separate chapters that each covers roughly the same action, reality becomes a series of preconceived notions that are… Read More »
THE LOVE WITCH
There have been few horror films more delightful that THE LOVE WITCH. Ostensibly an homage/send-up of mid-century exploitation films that sold social relevance as an excuse for prurient titillation, it combines wicked visual juxtapositions, inspired bad acting, and the oddest burlesque show ever in an inordinately entertaining examination of the perils of waiting for Prince… Read More »
KAMPAI! FOR THE LOVE OF SAKE
Full disclosure. KAMPAI! FOR THE LOVE OF SAKE will make you want to seek out your nearest sake tasting. This, ahem, intoxicating documentary about the national drink of Japan, and the people who have made it their life’s work, is a paean to more than just rice wine. It is a consideration of tradition in… Read More »
TRAIN TO BUSAN (Busanhaeng)
New zombies, new rules. If TRAIN TO BUSAN did nothing but find a new take on zombies, it would be worth your time, but this Korean gem goes the extra yardage to gift us with an engrossing story that contains only a soupçon of well-regulated sappy sentiment. It’s far more interested in observing what happens… Read More »
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