Some fathers are born, some are made, and some were never meant to be. Jorge Machado, a Mayan fisherman, was evidently born to be…
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…
Most of us are loathe to admit it, but the job of a film critic is, more often than not, that of a glorified…
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…
Redundant conversations about celebrity culture and nauseating puns about table seasonings are inevitably attached to an Angelina Jolie film entitled Salt. A mix of…
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…
Ongoing military conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq define the last decade of American foreign policy, not only for their historical representation of a shady…
I love Mumblecore! Well, I hate the word “Mumblecore,” but I love many of the films that get this label. These are films from…
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…
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…
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…
“We’re all just trash, waiting to be thrown away…” Consider what it must be like to be a toy in the world of the…
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,…
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…
“What’s the worst that could happen?” The smart viewer, upon hearing this phrase during a film, will cringe. This is always intended as a…
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.…
The chill comes off the screen. Ice hangs from the roofs and tree limbs. Frost covers the ground. The girl is in a boat,…
Not many films possess the mindset of a black widow — eager to lure you in, chew you up, and spit you out as…