Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), the latest film from Alejandro González Iñárritu, is a showy directorial performance about performance. By design, it’s swooningly…
It’s been a long 10 days at the 2014 LFF, but I’m back with news of films from the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia,…
Near the end of Listen Up Philip, the audacious third feature from Alex Ross Perry, narcissistic author Philip (Jason Schwartzman) attempts to rekindle some sympathy…
War in cinema is often treated either as a crucible upon which manhood is tested and goodness defended (Saving Private Ryan) or as a portrait…
Jorge R. Gutierrez wants to teach people about his heritage. He also wants to make colorful, energetic animated films to dazzle a wide audience. With…
Just as much an essential piece of historiography as it is a poetic, ruminative look at the effects of folklore on the Eastern European condition,…
If I’m overloaded on caffeine and discussing the virtues of Keira Knightley with a random Italian woman, it must be that time of year again.…
Few current documentaries seem as of-the-moment as Jesse Moss’s The Overnighters, a film shot through with pulsating clarity and startling ambition. It follows Jay Reinke,…
There’s a moment near the end of the second act of Damien Chazelle’s sophomore feature Whiplash that threatens to completely derail the narrative: a character…
The success of James Wan’s The Conjuring last year, like that of Paranormal Activity back in 2009, points to a wave of purely affective horror…
David Fincher’s Gone Girl immediately announces its intentions to deconstruct everyday images with a deceptive opening-credits sequence consisting of shots of empty houses, “for sale”…
Jason Reitman’s latest Oscar shill, the formally inert and thematically overconfident Men, Women & Children, aspires to illustrate how humans — horny high school students and their…
The last time director Antoine Fuqua and actor Denzel Washington teamed up, back in 2001, Washington ended up scoring a Best Actor Oscar trophy for…
Having been put on the map by Coraline and Paranorman, stop-motion studio Laika returns with The Boxtrolls, a film which, while ostensibly possessing the same eye-catching visuals…
For an actor, part of the art of embodying a morally questionable character is to first seek a point of empathy rather than glaring signs…
The handheld, behind-the-head following shot loosely trailing a character in movement is often a staple of nonjudgmental, naturalistic filmmaking, coming as it does with a…
After opening with a swaggering bit of drunken police violence, Scott Frank’s A Walk Among the Tombstones spends its runtime bathing in its characters’ moral…
Whether or not you like Terry Gilliam’s films, you have to feel some kind of affinity for the man himself, what with his dogged determination…
In the opening of The Guest, a stranger pays a visit to a grieving family. “David” (Dan Stevens) arrives on the Petersons’ doorstep claiming to…
If you have any plans to see Bird People, Pascale Ferran’s whimsical study of mid-life dissatisfaction and the various methods we all use to abate…