It was a bold choice to make a woman the primary narrator of THE BIKERIDERS. Based on the photo book of the same name, and the interviews within it by Danny Lyon, it details the rise of the Vandals biker club in 1950s Chicago and takes us through its golden era that lasted until the… Read More »
BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE
The bad boys are back and, despite pre-emptive acknowledgements about how time is catching up with Miami’s most bombastic comedy duo of cop partners, the action is as fresh and fun as ever in BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE. If the schtick between “sensible” Mike and buffoonish Marcus isn’t quite as fresh or fun, transmogrifying… Read More »
BACK TO BLACK
Any success enjoyed by the Amy Winehouse biopic, BACK TO BLACK, rests squarely on the frail shoulders of the actress playing the singer, Marisa Abela. With an outsized presence like Winehouse herself, Abela channels Winehouse’s violence and vulnerability, making her at once a lost little girl and a musical powerhouse who refused to be pigeonholed… Read More »
WICKED LITTLE LETTERS
Social change has come to 1920s Littlehampton in the person of Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley), a foul-mouthed pub-roisterer of an Irish immigrant to this sleepy little English town. More specifically, her unconventional choices, including raising her daughter on her own and living with a man (Malachi Kirby) to whom she is not married, predictably raise… Read More »
IN THE LAND OF SAINTS AND SINNERS
IN THE LAND OF SAINTS AND SINNERS is a melancholy study of the futility of violence. Set in the war-torn Northern Ireland of 1974, it features a performance by Liam Neeson that is considered, measured, and infinitely eloquent for its silences in a story that eschews politics as it finely observes the consequences of choices,… Read More »
PROBLEMISTA
There is so much to admire about Julio Torres’s PROBLEMISTA, from its magnificent manifestations of metaphor to its tweaking of subjective norms and random exploitation in a provocative satire as dark as night, but as hopeful as a buoyant full moon. The one that reigns supreme, though, is what Torres has done with the desperate,… Read More »
IMMACULATE
The first and last words spoken in IMMACULATE are the Hail Mary. That prayer takes on very different meanings in each context, and in between them we have a film that is uneven, but oddly fascinating. Taken on one level, it is a screed against the patriarchy, with a woman reduced to her womb. On… Read More »
DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS
DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS may be another proof of the universe’s entropy. You know, the rule that posits everything is slowly devolving into a state of disarray and incoherence. Or something along those lines. This effort by Ethan Coen certainly shows flashes of the oddball genius of the films he made with his brother, Joel, but the… Read More »
OUT OF DARKNESS
OUT OF DARKNESS is set 45,000 years ago, and uses a constructed language based on Basque, but it deals with some disturbingly contemporary and immediately recognizable issues. For a time and characters so remote from our experience, it is remarkable for how the story of a small band of hunter/gatherers resonates with all too identifiable… Read More »
ARGYLLE
Someone once opined, perhaps facetiously, that there is a fine line between stupid and brilliant. There isn’t. There is a wide yawning chasm that would take a super-laser traveling at the speed of light several millennia to cross, and even then, it would only register on the far side as a faint glimmer in the… Read More »
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