Spin Me Round Jeff Baena’s Spin Me Round, co-written with its star Alison Brie, sets out as a comedic take on the very Hollywood idea of an American girl finding love abroad. Brie plays Amber, a manager of the movie’s Olive Garden stand-in, Tuscan Grove, who wins a…
Bitch Ass Slasher flick Bitch Ass opens with the one and only Tony Todd — yes, Candyman himself — as host of a seemingly low-rent cable access show entitled Hood Horror Movie Nights. As Todd lists the surprisingly sparse number of urban horror features, one begins to ponder…
Train Again is yet another bold, precise, and transcendental work from Peter Tscherkassky. As InRO contributor Brendan Nagle once observed, the image — 24 of them needed per second to produce the illusion of movement and also produce sound — of a charging train has certainly been linked to…
There’s an appealing, lulling rhythm to Kogonada’s second feature, but few of its philosophical inquires are met with worthy responses. There is much to savor in Kogonada’s first cinematic project since his widely acclaimed Columbus, and After Yang, indeed, arrives like spring after a lurid winter of technophobic…
Arnaud Desplechin’s third feature, Esther Kahn, premiered to mixed reviews at the 2000 edition of the Cannes Film Festival. Originally clocking in at 152 minutes, the celebrated young director of the much heralded My Sex Life… or How I Got Into an Argument suddenly found his latest project met with a…
The Batman is an entirely overlong and overextended affair, but otherwise delivers gorgeous imagery, thoughtful mythos, and playfully brooding emo inflection. The Dark Knight is moodier than ever in The Batman, which is really saying something. Director Matt Reeves’ new iteration of the superhero (here played by Robert Pattinson)…
If one were to name the auteur who most avidly committed to the integrity of mise-en-scène and who was always truly passionate in polemical defenses of this concept, it could be none other than the French master, Jacques Rivette. Whether throughout his career as a film critic and…
Servants is a brutal, efficient affair, unconventional in its dramaturgy but landing with considerable force. Director Ivan Ostrochovský’s Servants begins with a cryptic, murky sequence that quickly reveals itself to be an in media res cold open; a car careens down a dark road in the dead of…
A Banquet is atmospherically impressive for its first two acts, but doesn’t quite know how to stick the landing. The decision to eat or abstain is one that haunts women throughout Western narratives. Whether it is Alice, in Wonderland, eating as the first step of an adventure, or…
The Cursed is blessed with beautiful images but is otherwise plagued by an overly familiar werewolf narrative. Why’s it so hard to make a good werewolf movie? As one of the handfuls of enduring horror archetypes, filmmakers keep trying and trying, but tales of lycanthropy seem to have…
Ted K takes a potentially fascinating study and reduces it to a series of madman tropes and Wikipedia summarizing. The name Theodore Kaczynski has, for better or for worse, been so ingrained in our present-day cultural consciousness that its abbreviation, ‘Ted K’, contains little ambiguity. From anti-capitalist messiah to…
Bigbug is all bug and no feature, an obnoxious, puerile work of catastrophic indulgence from Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Much has been made of the fact that, over the past few years, Netflix has become something of a safe haven for auteur filmmakers who have felt inhibited by the Hollywood…
On the set of 1946’s Duel in the Sun, King Vidor was constantly assailed by a positively megalomaniacal David O. Selznick, who extrapolated new subplots and mini-climaxes from the already lurid western scenario, as well as imposed multiple other directors’ visions on Vidor’s so as to center and…
Marry Me isn’t even worth a second date. New romantic comedy Marry Me marks a reunion for stars Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson, both of whom appeared in 1997’s Anaconda. Indeed, Anaconda may stay in viewers minds while watching Marry Me, as the prospect of a giant CGI snake…
I Want You Back is a pleasantly askew rom-com, acidic on the edges and reveling in the distinct comedic style of its leads. There was a time when a mid-budget romantic comedy like I Want You Back would star the likes of Anne Hathaway and Paul Rudd, open in…
The Other Me amounts to little more than an empty spectacle banking on David Lynch’s name. Let’s get it out of the way: the most interesting thing about Giga Agladze’s The Other Me is its credited executive producer. David Lynch’s name is all over the film’s press materials and…
Erudite and playful and moving, The Worst Person in the World is brimming with ideas and feeling, and executed with the touch of a master storyteller. First published in 1967, Joan Didion’s essay Goodbye to All That details her arrival to, and eventual departure from, New York City, where she would spend…
Black Medusa is cast with a certain austere beauty, but is an otherwise empty exercise in bland, utilitarian form. In a thankless role as one of the most morose femmes fatales in memory, Nour Hajri plays Nada, a (mostly) mute office worker by day, serial killer (men only, natch)…
Happening Early on in Audrey Diwan’s Golden Lion–winning feature, Happening, a young woman is singled out in a classroom, unable to answer her professor’s query about a poem. Through a group of classmates, we learn that she is set to leave school to get married, though their gossip…
Compartment No. 6 is a gentle, moving romance that understands the benefit of languor rather than compression in establishing human connection. Single lodgings in a two-seater train compartment only afford so much privacy, and so in Compartment No. 6 Ljoha (Yuriy Borisov) and Laura (Seidi Haarla) confront each other…