Narcissus’ Pink Mirror: On Fantasy and Queer Desire
“Fantasy exists to create a place of greater safety, a rejection of the real world in favour of one that allows for an open, unapologetic queerness.”
Review: James Gray’s ‘Ad Astra’
“‘Ad Astra’ joins the likes of ‘Gravity’ and ‘Interstellar’ as one of Stanley Kubrick’s starchildren.”
Illness and Self-Reflection: Pedro Almodóvar’s ‘Broken Embraces’ and ‘Pain and Glory’
“By experiencing Almodóvar’s films as the product of a man whose view of the world is deeply affected by a variety of nagging medical concerns, only a few late period works thoroughly scratch under the surface of his psyche.”
‘Millennium Actress’ and the Legacy of Satoshi Kon
“No matter what one pulls from Kon’s work, there’s no denying his lasting impact and innate ability to immediately render a viewer speechless.”
Threatened Individualism: On François Truffaut’s ‘Fahrenheit 451’
“Throughout both the foreground and background of ‘Fahrenheit 451,’ Truffaut emphasizes the characters’ self-absorption via a hyper-sexual form of narcissism in a society lacking real love.”
On the Capitalist Realism of ‘The Box’
“‘The Box’ elevates the daily minutiae of capitalist cruelty into the science fiction moral framework of a ‘Twilight Zone’ yarn.”
Review: Bong Joon-ho’s ‘Parasite’
“‘Parasite’ takes a left turn that’s so hard yet so appropriate that it’s like watching a spectacularly executed high wire act.”
12 Angry Films: Sidney Lumet on Justice #3 – ‘The Offence’
“For a filmmaker usually so concerned with the social causes of injustice, ‘The Offence’ is remarkably focused on the troubled psychology of its central character.”
TIFF 2019 Review: James Mangold’s ‘Ford v Ferrari’ Provides an Old-School Adult Drama
“Nothing about ‘Ford v Ferrari’ reeks of studio interference, perhaps owing to the fact that the script hews so closely to screenwriting conventions that worked well for decades.”
TIFF 2019 Review: Wayne Wang’s ‘Coming Home Again’
“A collaboration between a Chinese-American director and a Korean-American writer, ‘Coming Home Again’ is an exemplar of minimal styling that shows that what is essentially human surpasses the boundary of what is ethnic and cultural.”
TIFF 2019 Review: ‘Knives Out’ Shows Rian Johnson Sharp as Ever
“Johnson loves whodunits so much that he racked his brain to think 10 steps ahead of the audience so that he could hoodwink them to serve the goal of establishing the genre’s viability in the present day, all while staying true to its classic roots.”
TIFF 2019 Review: On the Spiritual Strivings of Trey Edward Shults’ ‘Waves’
“For a story that engages with tough, thorny questions of redemption and reconciliation, it’s a welcome development to have a filmmaker look upwards, not inwards.”
‘The Banana Splits Movie’: A Bloody Horror Take on a Saturday Morning Favorite
“Esterhazy’s direction is consistently flat and uninspired given the nonstop opportunities for twisted weirdness, but the failure of ‘The Banana Splits Movie’ can be pinned almost entirely on the sawdust-packed script…”
Interview with ‘Bait’ Director Mark Jenkin
Bait Movie Interview: Vague Visages’ Jim Ross discusses the 2019 drama film with writer-director Mark Jenkin.
Crossover After Crossover: The Layered Discussions in ‘High Flying Bird’
“While ‘High Flying Bird’ may seem uneven at first glance, one has to appreciate that Soderbergh directly addresses controversial societal topics that always touch a nerve in America.”
Modern Malick
“In Malick’s effort to capture the alienation that accompanies modernity, in his contemporary-set films, he ultimately achieves a similar alienation cinematically.”
The Face of Faith: Falconetti, Dreyer and ‘The Passion of Joan of Arc’
“Today, what survives is a film of exquisite poise, of fleshly tenderness against concrete cruelty, an evocative warmth against the coldness of Joan’s formidable suffering.”
Radio Silence’s ‘Ready or Not’ Seeks Bloody Fun
“As a kind of grown-up ‘Clue’ in reverse, complete with the tribute appearance of a pepper-box revolver, ‘Ready or Not’ also lays out a motley assortment of Colonel Mustard and Mrs. Peacock-worthy opponents hell-bent on dispatching Grace prior to sun-up.”
FrightFest Review: Abner Pastoll’s ‘A Good Woman Is Hard to Find’
“An efficient script and commanding central performance from Sarah Bolger produce a memorable film with mostly intelligently drawn characters.”
FrightFest Review: Pedro C. Alonso’s ‘Feedback’
“From a technical perspective, ‘Feedback’ is extremely potent for long stretches. However, in aspiring to be relevant to current affairs, the film eschews effective simplicity for confused complexity.”