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What We Can Learn from the Scorsese Shorts

May 28th, 2020 Jason Bailey

It’s tempting, when viewing the early Martin Scorsese short films and mid-length documentaries assembled in the Criterion Collection’s new Scorsese Shorts, to focus on the coming attractions – the little flourishes, already present in these formative works, that would come to define the...

Movies

Review: The High Note

May 28th, 2020Kimber Myers

Like a highly produced pop song that leaves your head the second it’s over, The High Note is pleasant enough while you’re experiencing it, but it refuses to linger after the credits roll. Dakota Johnson and Tracee Ellis Ross lead a strong cast...

Classic Corner: <i>Céline and Julie Go Boating</i>

Looking Back

Classic Corner: Céline and Julie Go Boating

May 27th, 2020Anya Stanley

When the semi-annual conversation on female buddy movies resurfaces, there are usual suspects. Thelma and Louise. B.A.P.S. Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion. Steel Magnolias. One film that doesn’t show up in the conversation nearly as...

Looking Back

The Proto-‘Matrix’ ‘Johnny Mnemonic’ Never Tries To Be Anything But Itself

May 26th, 2020Roxana Hadadi

The 1990s were a strange time for filmmakers attempting to understand the Internet. As the technology went mainstream, with more families securing their own connections to the World Wide Web at home and schools adapting their curriculum to include...

Movies

Watch This: The Lovebirds

May 26th, 2020Abby Olcese

Paramount’s decision to sell The Lovebirds directly to Netflix in the wake of theater closings may seem like a real bummer at first glance, but it’s actually a blessing in disguise. The romantic comedy, starring Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani and...

All Steadicam and No Play: Movement in <i>The Shining</i>

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All Steadicam and No Play: Movement in The Shining

May 22nd, 2020Anya Stanley

In 1998, Stanley Kubrick accepted the D.W. Griffith Award from the Director’s Guild of America. In his acceptance speech, he compared Griffith to the Grecian myth of Icarus. Like Icarus, Griffith flew too close to the sun, but instead of his...

How <i>Rambo</i> Turned a Complicated Antihero into Agitprop

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How Rambo Turned a Complicated Antihero into Agitprop

May 22nd, 2020Jason Bailey

When Grand Central Publishing released a new edition of the novel First Blood in 2000, author David Morrell penned an introduction, attempting to bridge the gap between the character he wrote in the early 1970s and the version of that character...

Movies

Review: The Trip to Greece

May 21st, 2020Kristy Puchko

The Trip To Greece is to be the final of Michael Winterbottom's faux-documentary travel series, which partners Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon for a scenic tour of luxurious restaurants in enviable locales. And thank God, because after four "Trips" the...

Looking Back

Classic Corner: Seconds

May 20th, 2020Jason Bailey

John Frankenheimer’s 1966 thriller Seconds is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel as part of their Saul Bass centennial,and his distinctive opening title sequences, and good golly Miss Molly, Saul is putting in work from frame one here....

Movies

Watch This: Monstrum

May 19th, 2020Abby Olcese

The world of creature features has its own rogue’s gallery of beloved destruction generators. There’s Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah, Gamera, the Pacific Rim Kaiju... they’re practically their own wing of a fictional creature zoo. South...