Color Out of Space is a willing 80s horror throwback but relies on its foregone status as future cult film rather than developing anything truly…
Bonello’s attempt to meld cultural commentary with a historical consideration of colonialist sins is lost amid a commitment to tension-building. Voodoo, as represented in Zombi…
VHYes is a wannabe absurdist curiosity but is instead an interminable viewing experience. Jack Henry Robbins’ VHYes is the kitschy, post-ironic, pseudo-found footage 80’s pastiche the world…
The shallow characterizations at the core of Les Misérables dampen the effect of its incendiary anger. Ladj Ly’s debut feature may be called Les…
Weathering with You is a heartwarming and delicately animated escapist fantasy finds hope in hardscrabble realities. Makoto Shinkai has already proved himself an idiosyncratic anime…
“Whatever was going to happen has already happened,” says the protagonist of Marco Bellocchio’s 1965 debut feature, Fists in the Pocket (I pugni in tasca). This…
OK, so things don’t really vanish anymore: even the most limited film release will (most likely, eventually) find its way onto some streaming service or into…
#109: Crank 2: High Voltage Download episode here. Listen to episode here. Episode Description: Sequel month continues here at Summer Blockbuster!?! as we tackle…
The first image of Agnes Varda’s 1965 film Le Bonheur (meaning “happiness” in English) is that of a yellow sunflower beaming in the radiant light…
…Casablanca is not just one film. It is many films, an anthology. Made haphazardly, it probably made itself, if not actually against the will of…
Over a decade before the Coen Brothers released their neo-noir, blood-soaked vision of Americana, Blood Simple, Terrence Malick’s Badlands etched into the public consciousness…
#108: Excessive Force II: Force on Force Download episode here. Listen to episode here. Episode Description: It’s sequel month here on Summer Blockbuster!?!, where…
2019 was another faithful year that reminded us that there’s no hope whatsoever for anything: Our political system continues to fail us in a…
It’s been a year of confrontation at the movies, as the domestic and international conflicts of the past several years have reached varying degrees…
An experimental documentary of modest means and sweeping scale, Chinese Portrait offers a scintillating snapshot of a rapidly changing nation. Director Wang Xiaoshuai assembled…
Seberg is just the latest film to signal its interest in issues of racial injustice, and progressive commentary, only to counterproductively build itself around the…
Peter Strickland is a stylistic maximalist, an homage specialist who makes Tarantino look like a film school pedant. Along with Helene Cattet & Bruno…
From its title alone, Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life concerns itself with subjects that cinema often struggles to depict: the twin blossomings of consciousness and conscience.…