It’s only after three encounters, a night on molly, a blow-up argument, an impassioned recitation of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “First Fig,” and some tender May-December — late December — sex that Sam Elliott’s The Hero character can be bothered to ask what Laura Prepon’s does for a living. Turns…
It was two weeks before Salma Hayek’s 49th birthday when Mike White told her he was finally going to write that script about the dinner party, the one he’d promised her almost a year earlier. The screenplay would be loosely inspired by a real-life dinner the two had attended, but…
Over the years, Tom Cruise has been many things, but he’s almost never been marginalized — not in one of his own movies. Oh, he’s played supporting parts and done cameos here and there, but even in those smaller roles (in films like Tropic Thunder or Rock of Ages), he…
Since last November, we’ve been asked to understand, if not necessarily sympathize with, the furious resentments of the racists, misogynists, homophobes and plutocrats who have brought us to this point of political calamity. The fifth season of Orange Is the New Black (Netflix) appears to be its own kind of…
A couple years into his supposed retirement, the 80-year-old Ken Loach showed up at Cannes with I, Daniel Blake and proceeded to win the Palme d’Or (his second, after 2006’s The Wind that Shakes the Barley). The film follows an aging carpenter (Dave Johns) with a heart problem and a…
Sure, we’ve all gotten desensitized to screen violence, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be shocked. Ken Loach’s quietly furious I, Daniel Blake will likely jolt you with its depiction of a different kind of killing: the paperwork, on-hold music and long-wait rigmarole a widowed English woodworker endures while trying…
The trailer for Henry Koster’s 1952 adaptation of My Cousin Rachel channels hysteria as the voiceover asks, “Was she woman or witch? Madonna or murderess?” Unfortunately, the film itself proved far tamer than the marketing suggested. The novel’s author, Daphne du Maurier, who also penned The Birds and the psychological…
A red door is, biblically speaking, a sign of protection, an echo of the blood rubbed on posts and lintels during Passover to keep God from smiting you and your home. But like most things that the Bible insists are positive, the red door also comes with an undercurrent of…
The 2017 Cannes Film Festival wrapped up last Sunday with a slate of generally predictable (and perfectly worthwhile) awards. And while it may have been a somewhat lackluster year for the festival’s main competition, there were plenty of cinematic treasures to be found on the Croisette – even a couple…
It’s summer! Time to stay inside and watch TV! Duh! I’m Dying Up Here (Showtime), June 4 Peak TV giveth, and Peak TV taketh away. And sometimes Peak TV confuses the shit outta ye. Case in point: this new drama about LA’s stand-up comedy scene in the 70s. I mean,…
Summer movie season is coming to a theater near you. The multiplexes stock up on big, bold blockbusters and arthouses pack their rafters with specialty programming and cinematic adventures.
In July 1985, Videotique opened in Capitol Hill as the Denver’s latest video store. Now, 32 years later, the shop’s owners have announced it will shutter its doors at the end of June.
I’m Dying Up Here premieres June 4 on Showtime Mythologies are built on pain. It’s why nations remember the invasions they’ve suffered better than the ones they’ve perpetrated, why religions celebrate their martyrs, and why Disney princesses — among the most privileged individuals in their respective kingdoms — sing about…
In 2015, House of Cards’ fourth season had President Francis Underwood (Kevin Spacey) confessing a murder to his secretary of state, ICO (the series’ fictional ISIS) beheading a guy on live TV, lone journalist Tom Hammerschmidt (Boris McGiver) dogging the president with corruption charges, data scientist Aidan MacAllan (Damian Young)…
For some reason, I can’t bring myself to hate Jim Brockmire. Played by comedian Hank Azaria, best known for his voice work on The Simpsons, Brockmire wears a perpetually wounded and somewhat confused expression, the look of a man coming off a bender who can’t find his car. His loud,…
Perhaps Wonder Woman’s greatest superpower is enduring for the past 75 years as a wildly unstable signifier. Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman, starring Gal Gadot in the title role, further adds to this complicated, contradictory cluster of signs and symbols. Forged from deeply feminist sympathies, the character debuted in All Star…
There will always be, it’s become clear, one more Winston Churchill story to tell: one more slant on a weekend, a summer, a year in the life of the 20th century’s most formidable leader, a man whose history includes two world wars and speeches so glorious that future dramatizations were…
With his bow-legged power-walk, low-boil narcissism and tough-guy snarl, Brad Pitt is the comic ghost in David Michod’s all-too-real War Machine. The film, which is premiering on Netflix this week (and also getting an extremely limited theatrical release), was inspired by the late Michael Hastings’s book The Operators: The Wild…
“I can’t ensure I will not be disappeared in the future,” Joshua Wong says, deep into Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower, Joe Piscatella’s rousing, terrifying thriller of a documentary. He says it a little distractedly, as though his own life is an afterthought when considered against the scope of his movement…
Imagine a remake of Cape Fear shot like Kubrick’s The Shining, with Max Cady recast as a child, and you’ll have some idea of the strangeness of Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer. The film has quickly proved to be one of the most divisive titles at this…
In the run-up to this year’s festival, Bong Joon-ho’s Okja was one of the most mysterious titles in the Official Selection lineup. Now that people have seen it, Okja has turned out to be…one of the most mysterious titles in the Official Selection lineup. What is it, exactly? A children’s…
From A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night to The Bad Batch, director Ana Lily Amirpour isn’t afraid to take risks. Her latest features A-list actors including Keanu Reeves, Jim Carrey, Jason Momoa, Giovanni Ribisi and Diego Luna.
