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, Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will” — the golden mean of ideological manipulation. And in the shadow of Riefenstahl’s work lie thousands of…
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 One In, Tomas Alfredson’s brooding Swedish vampire film, and Let Me In, Matt Reeves’s stirring but ultimately problematic remake. Even though both films…
Self-seriousness can mortally wound the work of a pulp filmmaker who depends on his flashy style. In the case of British director Neil Marshall, obvious political and moral posturing has begun to replace genuine thrills and excitement. From the hilariously absurd werewolves vs. commandos romp Dog Soldiers, to…
It’s a commonly held misconception that the exploitation cinema of the 1970s and early ’80s was “cheesy,” constituting unintentionally funny, poorly made trash notable only for gratuitous violence and sex. Certainly a great many films of the time fit that description neatly, but so would many made today.…
Though made in 2010, Sylvester Stallone’s The Expendables has more in common with action pictures of days gone by. That’s not to say that the film is marooned in the late ’80s, and Stallone seems aware of how far removed the days of Rambo and Commando are from…
Female cinematic incarnations have long played second fiddle to subjective male visions of lust, intoxication, and regret, collectively narrow interpretations that often disavow a woman’s perspective altogether. Arzner, Lupino, Varda, Akerman, Breillat, and Campion have tipped the scales closer to equality, but the terrible fact remains that movies…
Edgar Wright is a man at home in pop culture. Despite a winking self-awareness of the tropes that drive their genres, his first two feature films (Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) evidence an appreciation and understanding of their forms that goes far beyond snide post-modern irony.…
Some fathers are born, some are made, and some were never meant to be. Jorge Machado, a Mayan fisherman, was evidently born to be a father—every motion and facial tick suggests as much under the proving stare of Pedro González-Rubio’s lens. Alamar (aka To the Sea) is a…
Most of us are loathe to admit it, but the job of a film critic is, more often than not, that of a glorified publicist. The best among us aspire to more—to enlightenment, to intellectual engagement, to the communication of everything this oh-so-young artistic medium is capable of…
Even at the ripe old age of 88, Alain Resnais’s filmmaking engine seems to have an endless supply of creative fuel left. Like clockwork, Resnais churns out a film every four years or so and if his latest offering is any indication, the auteur hasn’t lost the diabolical…
Most films never expand past their 16:9 rectangular tombs, passively projecting until they inevitably fade to black. But a film like I Am Love transcends these boundaries and exists beyond the screen. Luca Guadagnino’s epic melodrama shifts and squirms, pushes and pulls like an organism demanding evolution, challenging…
It’s an ironic kind of blessing when the tag “Walt Disney Pictures and Jerry Bruckheimer Films present” is appended to a film’s opening titles. You know to brace yourself on seeing it. The casual moviegoer can step outside — forewarned is forearmed — but the reviewer can’t do…
Not many films possess the mindset of a black widow — eager to lure you in, chew you up, and spit you out as if it were second nature. Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me is like that edacious arachnid, a purveyor of psychopathy in its most lurid form…
Neil Jordan is one of those directors whose reputation mysteriously exceeds his productivity. Few of his films stand out as anything more than thrill or gimmick, but they’re often garbed in a thick drape of aesthetic matter that makes them look fuller than they are, and which helps…
In Remember Me, Robert Pattinson’s voiceover twice cites a possibly-apocryphal quote by Gandhi: “Whatever you do in life will be insignificant. But it’s very important that you do it because no one else will.” By the second appearance of this quote, it has been rendered hideously ironic by…
After a yearlong delay, a replacement director, heavy reshoots, and multiple editors, The Wolfman is probably about as good as it could possibly be. It gets quite a bit right, adding up to a solid B-horror offering that delivers more than a few pleasures during its lean, 100-minute…
More vampires? Really? Is that what we need? You can’t swing a bat at the multiplex these days without hitting one, though it could be worse. We could be facing an onslaught of Matthew McConaughey romantic comedies (now that’s scary). The good news is that Daybreakers is a…
The Twilight Saga: New Moon hardly needs an introduction. As the second film in the massively popular vampmance series, courtesy of author Stephanie Meyer, New Moon earned high expectations thanks to one of the most extensive and hormone-centric marketing campaigns in recent memory. The first Twilight caught plenty…
When I was in third grade, I discovered my love for writing while penning an essay about Amelia Earhart. I vividly remember sitting at my kitchen table, reading about her adventures in an encyclopedia, and mythologizing both her existence as a 1930s aviatrix and her legendary disappearance. She…
Ricky Gervais has ample amount of personality and charm. He made the British version of The Office into the cult hit it has become, and he made last year’s Ghost Town at the very least enjoyable. A well-seasoned actor and writer, Gervais’ logical next step would be feature…