From The Searchers to You Were Never Really Here, the "captivity narrative" is one of America's strongest tropes
When Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here (now available on DVD/VOD) came out this past spring, it was hailed as a modern update of Taxi Driver. Like Martin Scorsese’s...
The Blu-ray format arrived on June 20, 2006 -- that’s a whopping 12 years ago for those of you who struggle with mental math -- but there is still an abundance of films that have yet to see a release in that format. Ask a physical media collector which movies they’re hoping to see get the...
In March, director Peyton Reed told Empire Magazine that his Ant-Man and the Wasp, despite early reports, is “not a romantic comedy,” and that any romantic connection between its title characters (played by Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly) would take a backseat to the action sequences and...
Toys R Gone.
Her smock said “Last of The Toys R Us Kids.” If that was any kind of honor, the cashier didn’t wear it like one. I knew they were closing, but it didn’t sink in until I saw it. The place that enchanted me as a kid more than anywhere else within driving distance would soon...
Are you tired of social media self-loathing? Well, I have good news: you can re-direct your negative vibes onto ill-fated movie characters who will have you screaming and cursing quietly as they get scorched by horrible summertime decisions. Here are four psychological thrillers — all currently...
In 1993, before binge-watching was feasible and when most TV shows were made to be as accessible as possible, a drama series broke new ground, splitting its episodes between heavily serialized “mythology” installments and stand-alone “monster of the week” entries. That show was Chris...
Way back in the prolific filmography Steven Soderbergh (whose latest film, Unsane, is out on DVD this week), there’s the tiny Schizopolis (1996), his hilarious, endlessly creative mental breakdown of a vanity project. Full of ideas and self-amusement, It’s best imagined as Soderbergh’s...
Pride Month was ushered in this year by A Kid Like Jake, a tender adaptation of Daniel Pearle’s play about a 4-year-old boy who loves to dress up as princesses. His parents (wonderfully played by Jim Parsons and Claire Danes) struggle to navigate the thorny politics of rearing a gender...
Arguably the first mainstream American film to portray contemporary occultism in depth, Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby — released 50 years ago this month — premiered as a palpable fascination with the occult was taking hold. Based upon Ira Levin’s bestselling novel, various real-life...
Four movies deep and 20 degrees down, my brother and I were the last ones left at the Aut-O-Rama Twin. The only other survivor — a hardy family piled in and around a pickup truck — must’ve bailed while I was in the bathroom. When I shambled out of the brick bunker, under the red humming...
Given his scene-stealing work as Lando Calrissian in Solo: A Star Wars Story and the artistic poignancy of his masterwork music video “This is America,” it should surprise no one that when Donald Glover made his film debut in the very silly indie Mystery Team (2009), he was the MVP. As...
This month saw the passing of Philip Roth, as important — and no less controversial — a figure to the field of literature as Ty Cobb was to baseball, or Pablo Picasso was to painting. Considered by many to rank among the greatest American novelists of all time, Roth also accumulated a large...
The neo-noir was a genre closely identified with the ‘90s. By 1998, though, neo-noirs were a dime a dozen, with directors and screenwriters trying numerous ways to infuse something new into their takes; many tended to up the salaciousness factor in the hopes that titillation would bring in...
“If people had to choose, this summer, between seeing one dinosaur movie, much as I’m proud of Carnosaur, I would probably recommend Jurassic Park,” says Roger Corman with a happy-to-be-here smile on his face and a dinosaur puppet on his hand. “But, I think we can agree, that I would hope...
The English Romantic writer Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley lived about as cinematic a life as one could, filled with historic achievement, tortuous love, wild sex, radical politics, turbulent family drama, and one devastating personal tragedy after another. That the new film about her early adult...
