Although the story of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s L’Enfer began over 45 years ago, the short history of this documentary was launched in a Paris elevator, where…
Though made in 2010, Sylvester Stallone’s The Expendables has more in common with action pictures of days gone by. That’s not to say that the…
Female cinematic incarnations have long played second fiddle to subjective male visions of lust, intoxication, and regret, collectively narrow interpretations that often disavow a woman’s…
Edgar Wright is a man at home in pop culture. Despite a winking self-awareness of the tropes that drive their genres, his first two feature…
Late in Alex Gibney’s Casino Jack and the United States of Money, a damning but top-heavy indictment of clearly evil Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, we’re…
The debate over the 1989 children’s book Heather Has Two Mommies seems like a cultural millennium ago, but that doesn’t mean the era ushered in…
Some fathers are born, some are made, and some were never meant to be. Jorge Machado, a Mayan fisherman, was evidently born to be a…
Toward the end of Jacques Rivette’s Around a Small Mountain, one of the film’s cast of circus performers botches a routine. As part of an…
Only the resentful or the contrarian could undervalue Xavier Dolan’s I Killed My Mother as an achievement both professional and cinematic. Written, produced, and directed…
Redundant conversations about celebrity culture and nauseating puns about table seasonings are inevitably attached to an Angelina Jolie film entitled Salt. A mix of trite…
Like a vengeful cornered beast, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Valhalla Rising exhibits a desperate ferociousness during even its most lyrical moments. Set in 1000 AD amidst…
Ongoing military conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq define the last decade of American foreign policy, not only for their historical representation of a shady Bush-era…
I love Mumblecore! Well, I hate the word “Mumblecore,” but I love many of the films that get this label. These are films from young…
Time has had a unique effect on John McTiernan’s 1987 sci-fi action classic Predator. While its status as a genre benchmark has solidified over the…
In a summer season besieged by stinkers, M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender took very little time to gather a reputation as the most malodorous…
The parallels between Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island and Christopher Nolan’s much-anticipated Inception form a fascinating Siamese twin. Overlapping themes of familial fissures and regret make up…
Even at the ripe old age of 88, Alain Resnais’s filmmaking engine seems to have an endless supply of creative fuel left. Like clockwork, Resnais…
Most films never expand past their 16:9 rectangular tombs, passively projecting until they inevitably fade to black. But a film like I Am Love transcends…
It’s an ironic kind of blessing when the tag “Walt Disney Pictures and Jerry Bruckheimer Films present” is appended to a film’s opening titles. You…
The chill comes off the screen. Ice hangs from the roofs and tree limbs. Frost covers the ground. The girl is in a boat, drifting…
Not many films possess the mindset of a black widow — eager to lure you in, chew you up, and spit you out as if…