The stateside media-consuming public’s seemingly insatiable appetite for standup comedy product (The Comedian, Showtime’s I’m Dying Up Here, infinite podcasts) is the target audience of The Big Sick, Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon’s autobiographical dramatization of their own courtship. (He’s an aspiring Chicago standup, she’s a student.) Judd…
It doesn’t even seem possible that Jack Kao’s played aging gangster roles for more than 20 years, but here we are. The frequent Hou Hsiao-hsien star (A City of Sadness, Millennium Mambo) wasn’t ever actually a gangster (tattoos covering his back in many a film are merely the…
The 16th annual New York Asian Film Festival (June 30th – July 16th) started its two-week run on Friday, and we’re putting together our beefiest coverage ever: three lengthy dispatches posted throughout the whole sprawling schedule. In Dispatch 1, you’ll find NYAFF’s more characteristic, genre-oriented fare (Alan Mak and Felix Chong’s Extraordinary Mission,…
The 2017 BAMcinemafest ends this Sunday, and this dispatch concludes our coverage. Among the takes below, you’ll find several more holdovers from Sundance—including hit comedy The Big Sick and Alex Ross Perry’s unfairly panned Golden Exits—and two films (a narrative and a documentary) from American indie film director Michael Almereyda. Be sure to also check out our first…
#31: Too Dumb for Roman Numerals: The Sleazetacular ’80s of Charles Bronson & J. Lee Thompson Download episode here. Episode Description: The Reagan ’80s did funny things to people. Charles Bronson and J. Lee Thompson, the subjects of this month’s Bad Idea Podcast, were not exempt. The Decade from Hell saw…
The 46th edition of New Directors/New Films concluded this past Sunday with Dustin Guy Defa’s much-discussed Person to Person. Our final dispatch from the festival takes a look at Guy Defa’s “pleasantly low-key” film; tries to parse the intensions of Alain Della Negra and Kaori Kinoshita’s docu-drama hybrid on a UFO-worshipping cult; revisits Angela Shanelec’s film festival whatsit The…
#30: Hearts and Glowers: A Rough Ride Through Rom-coms of No Repute Download episode here. Episode Description: Like a chance encounter with a long-forgotten lover… like a sore that came from a night of loving unwisely… like an inescapable Celine Dion song… Bad Idea Podcast is coming back to you…
Through a career that’s spanned 16 mixtapes (four of them released commercially), three label deals (Cash Money Records, 1017 Records, and 300 Entertainment), and yet still no studio album, Young Thug has maintained a reputation as the most elusive rapper going; one really need only listen to his music to get…
If Damien Chazelle’s recent film La La Land essentially uses its every frame to try and justify its pastiche nature, through a sense of disenchantment, then Joe Benjamin & a Mighty Handful is the kind of band that doesn’t really feel it necessary to make that kind of effort;…
It’s heartening to realize that in a year of seemingly constant death—one in which the passing of great filmmakers was no exception—the best films here seemed intent on never forgetting those losses, to mine the past and the passed for new inspiration in the present, and in movingly reverent ways. Our great…
Our top 25 performances, before whittling it down to the 10 you’ll find below, featured votes for two actors from Manchester by the Sea, two from Toni Erdmann, four from Happy Hour, four from Certain Women, and a hefty five from Moonlight. A twist on a typical year’s voting trends which may
Just another year gone by—except songs seemed particularly vital for getting through these last 12 months. Not that you need me to tell you, but we lost some of our greatest purveyors of the form in 2016, and if the 10 selections below can’t compensate—if there’s no “Kiss” or “Mama Tried”…
Relationships fray without stated explanations in Pedro Almodóvar’s Julieta—but the settings reveal what information characters don’t. Julieta (Emma Suarez) receives startling news from a friend on the streets of Madrid, flanked by brutalist architecture in the background. In front of that staggering building, Julieta recieves secondhand words from her long-lost…
The 35th Vancouver International Film Festival wrapped on October 14th, capping a two-week marathon of cinema gorging. This third and final dispatch covers two acclaimed holdovers from the Locarno Film Festival, The Dreamed Path and The Human Surge; films from Eugene Green (Son of Joseph) and Hong Sangsoo (Yourself and Yours); a…
Coming just two weeks after the end of the 2016 Toronto Film Festival, the 35th Vancouver International Film Festival (September 29th – October 14th) boasts an impressive lineup, showcasing a huge number of world cinema’s major titles (including some, such as Alain Guiraudie’s Staying Vertical and Eugene Green’s…
At the start of American Honey, Jake and Star, its two lead characters (played by Shia LeBeouf and newcomer Sasha Lane, respectively) meet and somehow immediately fall for each other as Rihanna’s “We Found Love” blares over a Wal-Mart PA. “We found love in a hopeless place…” goes…
The 41st Toronto International Film Festival recently wrapped, and our writers were on hand to soak up the cinema bounty. Our second and final dispatch (find our first here) features some heavy, (seemingly) politically-minded films, including Bertrand Bonello’s festival fire-bomb Nocturama, which was rejected by both the Cannes and Venice…
Asghar Farhadi’s The Salesman and Cristian Mungiu’s Graduation navigate similar thematic territory—that of patriarchs finding their ethical boundaries pushed when their self-perceived altruistic defense of family becomes distorted— and demand empathetic viewing. Each film offers a study of imperfect people acting imperfectly, daring the audience to offer alternative courses to their…
The 41st Toronto International Film Festival recently wrapped, and our writers were on hand to soak up the cinema bounty. Our first of two dispatches includes hotly anticipated fall releases like Denis Villeneuve’s mysterious sci-fi film Arrival and Barry Jenkins’s decades-spanning character study Moonlight; holdovers from the competition lineup of…
Sion Sono’s The Virgin Psychics is one strange movie, though not for the reasons his films are usually strange. True to its title, this high-concept comedy about a group of virgins who are bestowed fantastical abilities mixes the supernatural with frank illustrations of sex and desire, and while…
Despite its 2012 release, Bad Film captures a Sion Sono before he reached international acclaim; before his particular brand of otaku-influenced action films; and before his unabashed revelry in exhibitionism and voyeurism. It was filmed back in the mid-’90s, way before Sono’s breakout Suicide Club, and not finished until after…