MAGGIE MOORE(S) is a nifty neo-noir that deftly plumbs the seeping corruption underlying the dull quotidian of a small southwestern city, trading the usual stark contrast between light and shadow for an oppressive sort of omnipresent sunlight that shows everything but reveals nothing. Beginning with a murder in a seedy motel parking lot, it flashes… Read More »
BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE
Drew Goddard crafts tales that are multi-layered and philosophically challenging. From his days in the Whedon-verse to the deliciously exercise in meta-text, CABIN IN THE WOODS, there is always much more going on than the surface narrative. And so it is with BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE, which may not be the flawless wonder… Read More »
GEMINI — Aaron Katz Interview
Click here to listen to the interview. Aaron Katz wanted to bring a different perspective on Hollywood to his neo-noir, GEMINI (spoiler alert: he succeeded). It’s one of the things we discussed when I spoke to him on March 12, 2018. His film finds Jill, the personal assistant to Heather, a rising movie star, caught… Read More »
THE AMERICAN SIDE
Click here to listen to the interview with filmmaker Jenna Ricker. Going over Niagara Falls in a barrel isn’t the most dangerous thing Charlie Paczynski (co-writer Greg Stuhr) faces in THE AMERICAN SIDE. Pasczynski is a low-rent private eye working the seamier side of Buffalo, New York, where Niagra falls and both honeymooners and suicides… Read More »
TOO LATE
Kierkegaard, noted Existentialist and proto-Absurdist, once opined that life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. As a cinematic exploration of the tragic and comedic implications of that, there is Dennis Hauck’s wistful neo-Noir, TOO LATE, a film that employs a strategic insouciance as it nimbly plays with the time/space continuum… Read More »
DAVE BOYLE Tracks the MAN FROM RENO
I love a film set in the same San Francisco that I inhabit. Nothing against the Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower, or Alcatraz, but I spend most of my time in places like Green Apple Books. It’s yet another reason that I was bowled over by Dave Boyle’s enchanting neo-Noir, MAN FROM RENO. Boyle is… Read More »
Joel Edgerton is on THE SQUARE
The most interesting bit of trivia that I discovered when talking with Joel Edgerton on February 9, 2010, wasnt anything to do with the film, THE SQUARE, which he co-wrote and in which he co-stars. It was how he was first introduced to the action figure of the character he played in STAR WARS: EPISODE… Read More »