“As the debate rages on about whether strong female characters in movies should evoke admiration through heroism or just be flawed, human and sometimes downright unlikeable, it’s nice to see that Brea Grant created a film that’s full of different women.”
“‘Dinner in America’ is a special movie with a genuinely punk rock feel and a charmingly odd couple at its heart. There are enough laughs and swoon-worthy moments to mark it out as the best, and weirdest, rom-com in years.”
“‘Joe Versus the Volcano’ is as thoughtful and sensitive as it is goofy. It brims with the sort of amazement that can reawaken forgotten feelings, and resuscitate a heart clogged by ennui.”
“Through a graceful use of Mozart’s music, ‘She Dies Tomorrow’ urges the audience to question their lives and unavoidable deaths.”
“It may sound strange to call a documentary about fans of a gory horror franchise ‘sweet,’ but that’s exactly what ‘Hail to the Deadites’ is.”
“Given that documentaries are being pushed into hybrid spaces, and that many modern animators are covering morbid subject matter, these 12 short films give an example of contemporary moving image work pushing at cinema’s comfort zones.”
“The virility of the unwanted foreigner is a typical focal point for the average xenophobe.”
“If failure is the greatest teacher, then Peter Medak has earned his doctorate with ‘The Ghost of Peter Sellers.'”
“Film criticism is so vital not because it’s a service, but because it’s a tool — a way for each person to arrive at the final word on each film they see from the critic that matters most: themselves.”
“‘Sputnik’ is a thoughtful, knotty sci-fi thriller that’s firmly character-driven and also boasts a horrifyingly beautiful creature.”
“It’s a fascinating experience to see ‘Aparisyon’ via Locarno’s ‘Open Doors’ strand, where it is presented as a key work in understanding contemporary Filipino cinema.”
“‘The Go-Go’s’ boasts a treasure chest full of archival content in all shapes and sizes, and the imagery almost always complements the anecdotes told by the subjects with delightful detail.”
“There was nothing else like ‘CREEM’ back then, and there’s still nothing like it now. That’s not only a testament to the importance of the magazine, it’s also a sad commentary on what’s lacking in modern music criticism.”
“‘Memories of Underdevelopment’ shares with ‘Pixote’ a cautious destabilization, a sense of how long can this last, of tipping points, radical reform and the capricious aftermath.”
“If Ferris Bueller and his day off resemble something else universal, it is liberation. In the context of the journey, this is best understood as the ability to be in transit.”
“Jarman’s mix of time, history, memory, fantasy and dreams in ‘Jubilee’ is ultimately a hopeful warning for the future.”
“As much as I love a good story, the best movies always transport me, in an intangible sense, through the base elements.”
“As a character study, Miloš Forman’s feature directorial debut presents a realistic vision of a boy’s attempt to come of age; a path full of setbacks without a tidy resolution.”
“I was taken with You Don’t Nomi’s comfortable attitude toward the complexity and ambiguity of a text that can support and sustain such wildly opposite readings.”
“In all her dramatic iterations, Patty Hearst stands for an American purity that was always illusory but remains hallowed, that successive generations have set out to wrest back from the forces of complication.”