“Heller draws a refreshing beauty from her “this is what it is” approach in The Diary of a Teenage Girl, getting tenderness out of content too often used simply to titillate, shock or be used for didactic tirades.”
A Column by Max Bledstein
“Matched by the acrobatic ferocity of Ferguson’s Faust, Cruise’s antics transform Rogue Nation into an explosive Cirque du Soleil performance on the grandest of scales.”
A Column by Dylan Moses Griffin
“‘Black Orpheus’ embraces sex as multiplicitous. This somehow makes the love more noble, because it is not confused with lust, and sex becomes a celebration rather than a symbol of it.”
A Column by Max Bledstein
“Throughout Unexpected, little is ever gained or lost, ultimately raising the question (albeit a rather absurd one when considering film): for whom was this made, and what is its intended purpose?”
“Fully asserting the series reboot mantra, M:I II eschews the original’s ethos in favour of half a Hitchcock riff (a lot of Notorious, with a pinch of To Catch a Thief) and half traditional, near self-parodic Woo bombast.”
The Fifth and Final Installment of “Tightrope Cinema: John Cassavetes’ Highwire World” by Phuong Le
A Series by Dylan Moses Griffin
A Column by Dylan Moses Griffin
“Pasolini suggests in ‘Mamma Roma’ that the spiritual beauty of humanity often emerges from vulgarity and contradiction.”
“Phoenix’s devastating final scene pretty much erases a need for the specifics of the moral blindness.”
“In choosing to cover so much breadth of ground, Felt falls well short of any meaningful examination of the gender issues plaguing American and world culture.”
A Column by Dylan Moses Griffin
“After my first viewing of ‘Vivre sa vie,’ I closed my laptop, went out and chopped my waist-length mane to a bob. Movies have always had that mysterious power of making me feel as if I have lived all the lives I see on-screen.”
“The strength of ‘Tabu’ lies in how powerfully sex is captured, offering aural and visual textures that inspire sensorial memories.”
“The tender performance of McKellen, as might be expected, is a reliable anchor keeping things afloat; the actor seemingly relishing a major turn free of mutants and wizardry — a fantasy icon on fine form as a man not fond of the fantastic.”
A Column by Max Bledstein
“A BBC Films production from the minds of Outnumbered, What We Did on Our Holiday often looks and feels like an extended sitcom episode rather than a film.”