How to Build a Girl is … a lot. You have American actress Beanie Feldstein doing a Midlands accent with her Manic Panic red curls spilling out of a top hat, all while talking to pictures of Sigmund Freud, Jo March, and Donna Summer — who talk back. It’s not subtle, but How to Build a […]
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Early in Claire’s Knee, Eric Rohmer’s 1970 comedy/drama, our protagonist Jérôme engages in an idle, maybe-hypothetical-maybe-not with his old friend Aurora, a novelist. Struck for ideas, she wonders what would happen if she based her new work on Jérôme – noting, as she does, the little crush that a teenage neighbor girl seems to have […]
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The most interesting thing to come out of expanded streaming during this period of staying home is the access to diverse voices. Many of the films featured in this column have come from less-represented communities: female filmmakers, filmmakers of color, even physically disabled filmmakers. It feels like a promising sign that this week is no […]
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Imagine an early 20th century drawing room, or alternatively, a fog-laden crypt. Suddenly from the shadows he emerges—a man with pale skin, dashingly tall and clad in a flowing cape, his booming, sonorous voice, piercing eyes and sly half-smile making his identity unmistakable: Dracula. This depiction of the character is undeniably tied to actor Bela […]
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Every writer has a book that changes them – a particular volume that hits you like a thunderbolt, magnifying with crystal clarity what the best prose can do, and what you could only hope, on your best day, to approach. For me, that book was Greil Marcus’s Mystery Train (out in a handsome new, fully […]
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In the Shadow of the Guillotine. The Murderous Corpse. The False Magistrate. The titles are as macabre as the masked madman that appears in them. From the publication of his first adventure in February 1911, the character of Fantômas seemed tailor-made for the movies. A master of disguise and evil genius capable of pulling off […]
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The Pierce Brothers’ The Wretched opens with a 1980s-set prologue that mimics the structure of a period-accurate slasher movie: a teenage babysitter, listening to music on her chunky headphones, arrives at a remote house, makes a reassuring phone call to her mom, and then walks right into a creepy basement to get murdered. The movie […]
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“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou Small-time thug Nicky (John Cassavetes) is in a real pickle. He stole a grand and ran, and his boss is a powerful and unsavory man who placed […]
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Bad Education recounts the true story of Roslyn School District Superintendent Frank Tassone (played by Hugh Jackman) and Assistant Superintendent Pam Gluckin (Allison Janney), who embezzled millions of dollars of taxpayer money from the Long Island school district– crimes uncovered and reported by a high school newspaper. This is what happens in the dramatic comedy, […]
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A child has been sold to a criminal by a desperate mother. Holed up together in a lonely shack, the dubious mentor gives the young protégé advice that he will hold onto for the rest of his short life: “When a man farewells this world, all he’s got left is his story.” The child will […]
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These days, Hunter S. Thompson is arguably more famous as a movie character than he is a writer. Founder of the ‘Gonzo’ school of journalism and a manic, drug-addled Jiminy Cricket to America’s troubled conscience during the brutal twilight years of the Free Love era, Thompson began as a reporter and essayist—for magazines like Esquire, […]
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Justin Kurzel’s True History of the Kelly Gang opens with a title insisting, “Nothing you’re about to see is true,” even though “true history” is right there in the title; moments later, in a voice-over of the memoir he’s writing for his child, the protagonist announces what he’s written shall “contain no single lie.” So […]
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