Imagine a remake of Cape Fear shot like Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, with Max Cady recast as a child, and you’ll have some idea of the strangeness of Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer. It was one of the most divisive titles at this year’s Cannes festival, thanks…
Maybe it’s encouraging, in a way, that an America in crisis struggles so mightily to make crowd-pleasing war movies. Whatever their politics, no studio exec today would let a wide-release desert-war drama come right out and say what even the GOP increasingly admits: that Iraq was a mistake, that Afghanistan has…
This fall, mainstream films are subverting expectations all over the place. Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! proved too much for some audiences looking for a moody drama who were then shocked by gory, allegorical narrative. Blade Runner 2049 sloughed off most of its predecessor’s lower-brow populist action for a somber tone and…
A frighteningly good time.
Here’s what we know about the new space.
Jane arrives in theaters on October 20 On Sept. 11, 2001, renowned primatologist and environmental advocate Jane Goodall was in New York on business. She had planned to catch a flight out to visit a high school to give a talk on how we can find a reason to hope…
First off, it’s this weekend.
Including a special Bar Flies, parties, and a poster show.
And where you can see ’em.
“…It wasn’t about giving a hundred percent, it was about giving a thousand percent.”
We all have one thing in common: Plan A didn’t work out.
Stay sexy and mark your calendar.
Grand Avenue, Roosevelt Row, and the Central Corridor.
Or the plans for one, anyway.
You’re right not to trust a film critic who calls a move stunning. But let me say this about Human Flow, the epic new documentary surveying the scope of the global refugee crisis, from Chinese artist/activist Ai Weiwei: It stunned me, in the truest sense of the word. Again and…
Fifty years ago, in 1967, Cool Hand Luke, The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, In the Heat of the Night, and The Dirty Dozen rocked American cinemas. And somewhere in a field outside Pittsburgh, George Romero and John Russo were shooting on black-and-white 16mm film a low-budget movie that would found…
The last few months have seen some welcome innovation in the cry-along subgenre of dramas about finding the will to keep living after bodily catastrophe. First, in the notably sincere and unsensational Stronger, director David Gordon Green and his crew strove to strip away as much of such films’ usual…
In the opening shot of Only the Brave, a flaming bear — not just a bear that happens to be burning but one that looks as if it had been created entirely from fire — lunges at the camera in the middle of a blazing forest. The image returns a…
My favorite biopics — those that tell any portion of a real person’s story faithfully — are those that borrow from other genres. Pablo Larrain’s Jackie possesses the kinetic punch of a horror film. Mario Van Peebles’ Baadasssss! is a sharp comedy. And Mike Leigh’s Topsy Turvy is a cutting…
Don’t have a lame week.
