Thunder Force is yet another high-concept comedy collab between McCarthy and Falcone that fails at, well, being funny. On its surface, a film like Thunder Force holds promise. An original superhero concept in the present climate is a rare thing, but one that is female-driven and of the…
Is 4 Lovers both reminds of DFA’s appeal and evinces the diminishing results when they stray from their template. Death From Above 1979 seem to have found a comfortable groove for themselves over the last few years, releasing three albums since 2014 when the band reunited after an…
Carrie Underwood At no point in her career has Carrie Underwood hidden her Christian faith; after American Idol, and the coronation single that followed, both ran their course, her first proper single as a country artist was “Jesus, Take the Wheel,” and many of her long list of…
Funny Face works as genre deconstruction and cinema of a certain geography, but its attempts at explicit commentary are less successful. Tim Sutton is a director at least in part characterized by his pursuit of a sort of Kubrickian auteurism; each successive film markedly different from the last…
Under the guise of complacent nothingness, the characters of Philippe Garrel’s Regular Lovers manage to paradoxically enact and participate in sundry relationships, death drives, drug habits, clashes with authority, and everything in between. The events of May ‘68 sit at the center of the film, but its bookends…
When I was 22, my best friend and I lived together for a while in the apartment where I grew up. We were a twenty-minute walk from the subway’s last stop, in a neighborhood that was years away from any semblance of trendiness. My mom was traveling for…
Released in March of 1981, Michael Mann’s Thief is one of the great debut feature films, a fully-formed work that shows a young(ish) director firmly in command of the themes and aesthetic proclivities that would reverberate throughout a now almost 50-year career. Having found some success in network…
My Salinger Year is a gently romantic, old-fashioned love letter to literature and those irrevocably shaped by it. Philippe Falardeau’s My Salinger Year is the film adaptation of Joanna Rakoff’s memoir of the same name, depicting the author’s year spent working for the literary agency that represented author J.D.…
Happily is heady, genuinely hilarious, and a work of impressive tonal balance from director BenDavid Grabinski. The law of diminishing returns dictates that, over time, optimal output will ultimately level off as new variants are introduced into the equation. The same goes for relationships; the feeling of euphoria present…
OK, so things don’t really vanish anymore: even the most limited film release will (most likely, eventually) find its way onto some streaming service or into some DVD bargain bin assuming that those still exist by the time this sentence finishes. In other words, while the title of…
The Spine of Night The Spine of Night is a whole lot of movie. Despite the film’s relatively straightforward fantasy logline — sorcerer goes mad with power, attempts to take over and/or destroy the world, unassuming hero saves the day — both its narrative and animation feature a…
Fucking with Nobody For her sophomore feature, Fucking with Nobody, Finnish director Hannaleena Hauru opts to play an on-screen alter-ego of herself. Hanna is a filmmaker who, after losing a project to her nemesis Kristian, gets involved in a fake Instagram catfishing scheme with a group of her…
As an inadvertent result of the world’s continued struggle against COVID-19, writer-director Martin Edralin’s Canadian family drama Islands evinces an unexpected form of empathy; with thousands upon thousands of single adult children around the globe forced to spend quarantine with their aging parents, this tale of a lonely,…
Gaia There’s an ancient, malevolent force living in the depths of the forest in director Jaco Bouwer’s Gaia, a psychedelic bit of eco-horror that finds nature taking over and transforming the human body in hideous ways. Forest Rangers Gabi (Monique Rockman) and Winston (Anthony Oseyemi) are doing their rounds…
The Fever has plenty on its mind and is considerably weighty in its own right, but feels somewhat too indebted to obvious, superior arthouse touchstones. “They woke up something that was asleep inside of us. They made us see what we didn’t know.” The imprecision of this statement —…
A deceptively boilerplate film noir with shades of drab eroticism, Nicole Garcia’s Lovers belies an astonishing sublimation of its cultural and existential milieux. Premiering amidst an especially weak lineup at Venice, and receiving an almost-unanimously negative response, her much-maligned latest originally bore the title of Lisa Redler, named…
Lovers A deceptively boilerplate film noir with shades of drab eroticism, Nicole Garcia’s Lovers belies an astonishing sublimation of its cultural and existential milieux. Premiering amidst an especially weak lineup at Venice, and receiving an almost-unanimously negative response, her much-maligned latest originally bore the title of Lisa Redler,…
Distractions isn’t the most high-profile release from Tindersticks, but it symbolizes a step in a bold direction for the band as they embark on their fourth decade together. Distractions marks Nottingham outfit Tindersticks’ 13th studio album, and while the sessions were certainly affected by the conditions of the pandemic,…
Tindersticks Distractions marks Nottingham outfit Tindersticks’ 13th studio album, and while the sessions were certainly affected by the conditions of the pandemic, the group’s front-man, Stuart Staples, has indicated that it shouldn’t be regarded as the mere result of some restrictive circumstance. That isn’t only because the album’s…
Like several films in the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema lineup, Love Affair(s) is a title that was meant to premiere at Cannes 2020, under “The Newcomers” banner (meant to highlight directors of note making their Cannes debuts). Also like other Rendez-Vous offerings, Love Affair(s) is clearly indebted to…
Following the travails of a middle-aged woman looking for new purpose after the death of her husband, Ludovic Bergery’s Margaux Hartmann is a gentle, unassuming drama featuring a remarkable lead performance by Emmanuelle Béart. Margaux, a relatively reserved, even quiet woman in her late 50s, has decided to attend…