There were times during this especially tumultuous year when it seemed as if the world at large was on the verge of collapsing. A whole commercial jetliner seemingly disappeared without a trace, leading some ostensibly serious news outlets to put forth honest-to-god inquires about…
The Film Canon (1950 – 1999) ~ All KtC Film Reviews ~ The Album Canon (1960 – 1999) ~ All KtC Album Reviews ~ I. The Value of a Canon When it comes to cataloging the most significant films and albums of the last half century-plus, there…
Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) is an ambitious immigrant who has secured a modest toe-hold distributing heating oil. Though he’s just taken a major risk in obtaining a piece of property that will allow him to expand and thrive, his competitors are robbing his trucks…
Comparable to reading a biography with informative chunks ripped out, leaving gaping holes aplenty in the narrative, Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken is little more than an incomplete and wholly misguided rendering of the fight of the human spirit. Chronicling the life of Louis “Louie” Zamperini…
A Note on Selection and Organization Criteria: The albums in our canon were categorized according to the year and label that granted them their earliest release anywhere in the world — except in certain cases where a later release may have been deemed more “canonical” (for instance choosing to…
Many of the interactions in Two Days, One Night occur on opposite sides of doorways, liminal spaces echoing protagonist Sandra’s (Marion Cotillard) temporary suspension between employment and unemployment. In their new film, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are fond of such uncomplicated visual correlatives for…
During the 1960s, painter Margaret Keane’s artwork, largely depicting children with outlandishly large eyes, was sold under the name of her husband, Walter, who apparently exhibited all manner of unpleasant behavior in his attempts to coerce his wife into complying with his ruse. She…
With the release of The Battle of the Five Armies, the third and final installment of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy, it should be obvious to all who have followed him down this path that this second Middle Earth triptych is not “based on” its…
If you haven’t seen Karel Reisz’s 1974 The Gambler before seeing Rupert Wyatt’s new Mark Wahlberg-starring remake, don’t watch it in close proximity to the new version. Here is yet another classic case of an original that makes the flaws of the remake seem…
Shawn Levy’s third Night at the Museum film immediately announces its most disconcerting element— its retrograde Orientalist bent—by opening with a 1934 archaeological excavation in Egypt, which, as is the case with most adventure-film flashback prologues of this kind, establishes a cursed object. In…
