When a filmmaker tells you what influenced them, believe it. Back in 2017, when Jordan Peele was making the rounds promoting his feature directorial debut Get Out, he spoke at length about the “social thrillers” that inspired it – genre films that were rooted in the issues of the moment, and...

The summer camp sex comedy is a cornerstone of 1980s cinema, and at first glance 1980’s Little Darlings looks like a minor example of the genre, without the pop-culture impact of something like the Meatballs franchise. Even the plot sounds like prime material for the parody of Wet Hot American...

It is slightly cynical (but not necessarily inaccurate) to describe Disney’s business strategy for the last decade or so as built, almost entirely, on nostalgia. The “live-action,” sometimes even shot-for-shot, remakes of animated classics like The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin,...

Scary stories are inherently political. How couldn’t they be? They tap into our greatest fears, and whatever those happen to be is a commentary on society at any given time. But the most enduring horror films also evolve over time, morphing to represent different fears as new socio-political...

Olivier Assayas’ Wasp Network, out this weekend on Netflix, is an intriguing entry in the prolific auteur’s catalog. This espionage thriller about the Miami Five – a group of Cuban intelligence officers arrested by the U.S. government in 1998 – hews a little more closely to Assayas’s...

A glance at Babyteeth’s brief synopsis makes it seem like this shattering Australian tragicomedy could be an adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel. But despite the shared DNA of a gravely ill teen and her bad boy love interest, this feature debut from TV director Shannon Murphy grows into...

It takes a big man to admit when he’s wrong, and I’m 6’4”, so I admit that I’m wrong a lot. And I’m going to do it again, right now. A couple of years back, I wrote a book called It’s Okay With Me: Hollywood, the 1970s, and the Return of the Private Eye (PLUG), covering (as you can...

In the decade after Stonewall, gay culture exploded and thrived in ways previously unthinkable. One filmmaker who covered every facet of it – from the parades to the adult film market – was Arthur J. Bressan, Jr., who also holds the distinction of making the first dramatic feature about AIDS,...

This month’s fringe VOD offerings feature unauthorized depictions of Elvis Presley and Lynyrd Skynyrd, plus a homicidal pro wrestler, a pair of perky teen detectives, and more from the far reaches of the direct-to-video release schedule. The Short History of the Long Road (select drive-in...

Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods came along at the right time. These days, the streets are covered with protesters – Black, white, whatever – officially fed the fuck up with an utterly broken police system, a system where an officer can kill an African-American man like George Floyd in broad...

In recent years, Judd Apatow’s work as a director and a producer has taken on a decidedly more mature and bittersweet tone. His earlier days directing movies like The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up presaged this, but hid their vulnerability beneath a thick haze of weed and sex jokes. Films...

It’s hard to believe now, but there was a time when comic book characters had little to no hope of success in Hollywood. Films adapted from comic magazines or newspaper “funnies” were few, given that the properties were seen as substandard material suitable only for children (or worse,...

Chantal Akerman was 25 years old when her technically groundbreaking, emotionally devastating, and alternately revered and reviled Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles played at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival. Speaking about the film in 2009, Akerman remembers the reaction: “People...

With the passing of Stuart Gordon this past March, cinema lost one of its great provocateurs. An agitator and enemy of good taste from the start of his career in the Chicago theater scene—where, during his 1968 production of The Game Show, he would lock audiences in the theater until they...

No matter how good a film is, or how satisfied a director and an audience may be with the final product, there will always be the urge to go back and play with it a bit more. But films are frustrating in that respect: after a certain point, they have to be released into the wild, and it’s...