On Ruben Östlund’s Dystopian Realities: ‘Force Majeure’ and ‘The Square’
“Painfully ironic, aggressive and humorously on point, Östlund’s films are timely cinematic pieces that put their characters’ moral compasses at stake.”
Long Live the New Flesh: Bodies, Horrors and Desires in David Cronenberg’s ‘Crash’ and ‘Videodrome’
“In ‘Crash,’ sex feels like a traffic accident. In ‘Videodrome,’ it becomes the subject of a warped, projected fantasy.”
Vincent Price and the Art of Darkness
“He always took the horror genre seriously, and that often meant daring to laugh in the face of the darkest horrors, toeing the line between irony and total seriousness.”
Pop Culture as Emotional Self-Defense in ‘Baby Driver’ and ‘The LEGO Batman Movie’
“Observing the dangerous consequences of retreating too far into escapist entertainment, these two films suggest that beneath all this cultural noise is the unacknowledged truth that the most fervent of music nerds and fanboys may indeed be ‘scared as shit.’”
War and Domestic Violence in Fritz Lang’s ‘Human Desire’
“In ‘Human Desire,’ the train tracks carry its hero into the sunny paradise of the American Dream, not the depths of noir’s endless night.”
Zack Snyder’s ‘Justice League’ Saves the Earth but Not the DC Extended Universe
“The DC Extended Universe is not doomed, but it needs its own clear identity and purpose. Rebranding ‘The Avengers’ is not the answer.”
Murray Lerner’s ‘Festival’: A Prototype for the Music Documentary
“‘Festival’ challenges our preconceptions about the past – in this case, that of folk music and of music documentaries themselves.”
Vague Visages Is FilmStruck: Jeremy Carr on Erich von Stroheim’s ‘Greed’
“‘Greed’ is like the gold within the soil, a gem that must be mined from its sullied context.”
The Song of the Cloud-Capped Mountain: Anushka Meenakshi and Iswar Srikumar’s ‘Kho ki pa lü’
“‘Kho ki pa lü’ is about a lot of things, but it’s mostly about music. It is about Li, the songs that people sing when they cultivate rice in small müles.”
The Tattoos Tell the Story: Viggo Mortensen’s Painted Body
“Mortensen uses his body to display his characters’ essential tensions, as they ride the line between truth and lies, loyalty and betrayal, chaos and control.”
When Hansel and Gretel Live in a Bus: Paakhi A. Tyrewala’s ‘Pahuna: The Little Visitors’
“In a country whose cinema is often just classified under the homogenous canopy of ‘Bollywood,’ a film in Sikkimese is not only a welcome change but also a political reversal of existing canons. It is a small but eventful beginning, a small step towards a more inclusive ‘Indian’ cinema.”
‘Ali: Fear Eats the Soul’: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Timely Melodrama
“Fassbinder created a masterpiece that is relatable due to his depictions of racism, discrimination and the complexities of identity — themes which still resonate loudly today.”
Conduits of Fear: The Vital Role of The Youth in Horror
“Horror is a genre that believes, rightly, that young people are the future.”
Secret Defense: A Close-Up on Arnaud Desplechin’s ‘Esther Kahn’
“Phoenix delivers an opaque but strikingly physical performance, reminiscent of the women in Charlie Chaplin’s films.”
Norman McLaren: Genius in Motion
“Unconventional but playful, rarely has the avant-garde been so joyful to discover.”
‘Halloween II’: Rob Zombie’s Mad Opus on Trauma and the Tendrils of Toxic Familial Ties
“It is the rare film where form and content align at a time when its creator is close to formal mastery and itching for singular experimentation.”
The Haunted House Heartbeat in Dario Argento’s ‘Inferno’
“The real strength of ‘Inferno’ is the dominant sense of terror that Argento creates through his mastery of physical space (shaded by bright reds and blues, contrastive images of grandeur and decay in the production design)…”
Vague Visages Is FilmStruck: Ingmar Bergman’s ‘Summer with Monika’
“Undeniably the central focus of ‘Summer with Monika,’ Andersson’s overt sex appeal somewhat minimizes her remarkable range in the film, her seamlessly oscillating moods and subtle facial intimations.”
Why I Wear the Mask: Tom Hardy’s Performances of Limitation
“Behind the mask, lurking within the timbre of the vocal choices, buried beneath the shaped physique, there is truth.”
Disney Dreams in Sean Baker’s ‘The Florida Project’
“‘The Florida Project’ is a marvelous portrait of childhood that depicts how it feels to live on the fringes and just out of reach from The Happiest Place on Earth.”