As the saying goes, there’s only one thing worse than being a slut: being a virgin. A ludicrous notion if you value your health, but…
Just as Woody Allen keeps demonstrating a preference for leaving behind a depressing legacy of quantity over quality, that other favorite Great American Director, Clint…
What Frederick Wiseman is doing barely constitutes as documentary filmmaking anymore — there are no talking heads, no narration, all sound is diegetic, and only…
The American dissects the emotional enigmas of those working in two of the oldest professions — assassins and prostitutes, respectively. Its cryptic characters depend on…
The opening montage of I’m Still Here summons a cloud of fame engulfing actor Joaquin Phoenix — awards, accolades, the media appearances, the movies, and…
When Zhang Yimou announced he was to remake the Coen Brothers’ 1984 seminal noir Blood Simple, one couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking.…
No one’s going to argue that the Nazi propaganda machine, helmed by Joseph Goebbels, didn’t exploit the power of the filmed image. Case in point,…
In 1969, Jacques Mesrine (May-reen), French arch-criminal and would-be folk hero, was on the lam from both French and Canadian authorities. He fled to the…
The stunning opening sequence of Ben Affleck’s Gone Baby Gone immediately communicates a specific relationship between region and mood. The flawless voice-over narration and lingering…
The labyrinthine social hierarchies of David Fincher’s The Social Network facilitate a narrative pinball game; competing male egos, hidden agendas, brooding desires, and palpable anger…
Isolation is a universal theme, but it can also describe an intrinsically American experience of teenage angst. This contextual difference firmly separates Let the Right…
Troubled families rarely dissolve overnight. Instead, a slow erosive process corrodes pacts and compromises over weeks, months, and even years. Inevitably, each member becomes trapped…