The Immediacy of Design: An Interview with ‘Good Time’ Production Designer Sam Lisenco
Sam Ankenbauer and Production Designer Sam Lisenco Discuss ‘Good Time’
Parody of Power: Benny and Josh Safdie’s ‘Good Time’
“By exposing the falsehood of one’s presumption of power, the Safdies awaken viewers to the inescapable consequences of their actions and weaknesses, along with the vulnerability of their own fate.”
Review: Philip Gelatt’s ‘They Remain’
“Suspense and tension aren’t strictly necessary to this kind of Lovecraftian horror, but even so, the film suffocates under the weight of its own portentousness.”
Review: Francis Lawrence’s ‘Red Sparrow’
“In post-Hunger Games mode, Jennifer Lawrence continues her streak of pushing the envelope.”
Could Jordan Peele’s ‘Get Out’ Break Horror’s Dry Spell at the Oscars?
“Art is a product of its time; is it Get Out’s fault that the time mostly resembles a horror production?”
Vague Visages Is FilmStruck: Henri-Georges Clouzot’s ‘The Wages of Fear’
“Just because ‘The Wages of Fear’ is dire and pessimistic, that doesn’t make it any less perceptive or accurate. Quite the contrary: the virulent truth only makes it that much more engrossing…”
Sundance Film Festival Review: Nicolas Pesce’s ‘Piercing’
“‘Piercing’ plays out Reed and Jackie’s tryst as a sadomasochistic Punch and Judy routine, with the flare-ups of violence equally funny and horrifying.”
Framing the Breakdown: Visual Psychosis in Lucrecia Martel’s ‘The Headless Woman’
“Martel’s film is an absolute masterpiece in visual symbolism and deserves to be seen on that basis alone.”
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.”
‘Tormenting the Hen’ Director Theodore Collatos on the Use and Misuse of Language
Tanner Tafelski Interviews Theodore Collatos
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.”
Vague Visages Writers’ Room: Favorite Halloween Movies
In the Vague Visages Writers’ Room on Facebook, freelancers were asked to comment about their favorite Halloween flicks.
CIFF After Dark Review: Patrick Brice’s ‘Creep 2’
“Horror fans may need to adjust their expectations if they’re looking for more frights than laughs.”
New York Film Festival Review: Paul Schrader’s ‘First Reformed’
“The multi-hyphenate filmmaker’s latest seems to anticipate dissection: its formal austerity belies a haphazard, literary-minded indulgence.”
CIFF After Dark Review: Oliver Kienle’s ‘Four Hands’
“‘Four Hands’ is sublime and arresting in its imagery.”
Review: Denis Villeneuve’s ‘Blade Runner 2049’
“If time has the power to render every structure and memory as null, then here are the moments that define humanity; here are the moments that we hope to remember.”
TIFF 2017 Review: Govinda Van Maele’s ‘Gutland’
“The brooding ominousness Van Maele plays with throughout seems to run through many of this year’s European offerings.”
The Sadness of Desert Trolls: On Robert Altman’s ‘3 Women’
“Altman balances searing interpersonal conflicts with a visual rhythm that’s downright whimsical.”
The Absurdity of Our World: Tom Ford’s ‘Nocturnal Animals’
“With great color, style and technique, Ford haunts the audience with the disappointments of our absurd world.”