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…
The scenario behind Leigh Janiak’s debut feature Honeymoon is one of the most common in the horror genre: A newlywed couple spends their honeymoon at…
With a film festival as stacked to the gills as the TIFF, thematic trends are bound to pop up. Last year, doppelgängers appeared to be…
Another year, another insanely packed Toronto International Film Festival. While there are certainly titles premiering at TIFF this year that interest me, my festival experience…
Vividly shot in the titular city, Memphis is the sophomore film from Tim Sutton, writer-director of the digressive, virtually plotless coming-of-age film Pavilion, whose lush…
The first thing you may notice about Jersey Boys is the lighting—or more specifically, the light sources. Set mostly in darkened rooms that look as if all…
Kevin Jerome Everson’s The Island of St. Matthews plays like something that might be unearthed in the furthest reaches of a “community films” search criteria,…
Edward Yang has often been lumped in with the “slow cinema” of his Taiwanese compatriot, Hou Hsiao-hsien. And it’s true that Yang’s 2000 film, Yi Yi, moves quite slowly, basking in wide…
For a while, it seemed like 2013 had front-loaded its highlights; many films making our Top 20 either played the festival circuit in 2012 before finally…
It’s an acknowledged perceptual truth that we tend to ignore things about ourselves and the world around us that are uncomfortable to deal with. John…