“Babel is Crash with delusions of global grandeur; a film that masquerades as a sweeping, humanistic epic, but is instead an ultimately hammy, superficial and miserablist game of connect-the-dots.”
“Amores Perros clocks in at 150 minutes, yet not a single frame feels unnecessary.”
“It’s understandable for viewers to call something ‘overrated’ when they feel let down, however, critics should strike the word from their vocabularies.”
“A tiresome example of early 2000s prestige filmmaking, 21 Grams holds the impressions of grand gestures without any of the substance.”
“A Walk Among the Tombstones beholds one of the most understated and unique performances from action hero-era Liam Neeson.”
A Weekly Column on Love and Erotica in Cinema by Justine A. Smith
“Sisters is a house party film told by and from the perspective of women, and that is precisely why it succeeds.”
“Throughout much of his 60s work, Imamura often examined the balance between ordinary and unordinary people, and in The Profound Desire of the Gods, he finds an exceptional way of highlighting the extremity of this concept.”
“Even removed from the extraterrestrials and murderous Midwestern crime families, the world of Fargo is a violent and disturbing one, and Hank attempts to do his part by creating an Esperanto-like universal language.”
Here’s Josh Slater-Williams on four underrated gems of the past year.
“For all its frenetic editing, energetic performances and twisty narrative structure, there is sadly an elephant in the room, and that’s the film’s treatment (or mistreatment) of women.”
“Mistress America revels in the romance of being young before carefully setting its characters back down into the real world.”
A Weekly Column on Love and Erotica in Cinema by Justine A. Smith
Jaime Grijalba, a Chilean writer, comments on the exploitation of his country’s cinematic landscape.
Justine A. Smith Interviews Philippe Falardeau
“Featuring a standout performance from Agyness Dean and some of the best landscape photography since Mr. Turner, Sunset Song strikes a balance between toil and ecstasy that is at once overwhelming and completely uplifting.”
“Like the film, as much as Fargo looks like it’s set in our universe, dashes of the absurd emphasize that the series works under its own logic.”
“As it is, it’s like a stocking crammed with too many little bits and bobs that came to mind for the stocking-stuffer, ultimately pleasing no one like one or two well-considered big gifts would have.”
Lust, Caution is a bi-monthly series of essays that examines films within the label of “queer cinema.”
“If this is the last hour we spend watching The Leftovers, then “I Live Here Now” is certainly a historic one that successfully doubles as both a season finale and a series finale.”