“I’m not a field agent,” he insists. “I just read books.” And while that might be true, he’s going to have to learn to be a field agent, and do it pretty damn quickly. His name is Turner, and he works for the CIA – or, as it’s more often referenced, “The Company.” But he’s […]
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Of all the strange things to be found throughout the films of David Lynch, one of the most startling comes at the very beginning of his 1999 road movie The Straight Story, with the first title card reading: A Walt Disney Picture. It isn’t that the films of Disney and the films of Lynch are […]
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Invisible Life is both an appropriate movie to watch right now and the kind of thing that could make the quarantine experience even more keenly felt – it depends on how you look at it. On one hand, Karim Aïnouz’s drama about separated sisters in midcentury Brazil is engrossing and transportive. On the other, if you’re […]
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“Jo, captivated, watches type being set,” observes Greta Gerwig of her protagonist in the final pages of her screenplay for Little Women. It’s a beautiful, stirring moment as Saoirse Ronan’s Jo watches the fruit of her labors take tangible form as a published book thanks to the efforts of artisans and craftspeople. “Her inchoate desire […]
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In his biblical tome Nightmare USA: The Untold Story of the Exploitation Independents, author Stephen Thrower likens exploitation films to “the uncultivated countryside of the American landscape, where weeds and flowers grow alike more freely,” as opposed to the more sterile laboratory environment of Hollywood. Prestige cinema has always been easy enough to find in […]
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Political documentaries are always tough to critique from a purely cinema-based standpoint, if only because the format is usually superseded by the importance of the message, and that message is usually a little biased. Even films that attempt to present an issue in a way that can appeal to left and right alike usually end […]
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In late February, Netflix started listing the most popular offerings of the day on its homepage, ranking the Top 10 movies/series in the country. And for almost every day since its March 20 debut, the documentary miniseries Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness has been in either the No. 1 spot or close behind. By […]
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Slipperiness is the only constant in Polish director Malgorzata Szumowska’s English-language debut, which ably straddles the border between drama and horror. The Other Lamb skitters toward the border of the genre of unease and discomfort, dipping its toes in murky waters with both explicit visuals and unspoken implications. However, it gracefully refuses to dive in […]
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I selected Hud as the inaugural entry for “Classics Corner,” a new weekly feature spotlighting a pre-1980 film newly available on disc or streaming, mostly on a whim – it’s among the new additions to Hulu this month, and has been on Amazon Prime for a while, and it’s Martin Ritt directing Paul Newman, so […]
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Right now, inspiring stories feel like a vitamin supplement. To get through these uncertain times, we’re going to need to hear stories about people who beat the odds against them, and the relationships that helped them do it. We need to be reminded about the power of community (even if we can’t always see the […]
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HandMade Films was formed by George Harrison and his business manager, Denis O’Brien, for the express purpose of bankrolling Monty Python’s Life of Brian – so it was only natural that the company became a clearinghouse for Python-related film projects in the early ’80s. These included Live at the Hollywood Bowl, Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits, […]
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Typecasting is a dirty word for many performers, especially an actor. It implies that their abilities are limited to a small number of roles, when most decent actors have the range to play a wide variety of parts. Yet there’s always the “business” part of show business to consider, and selling a performer to audiences […]
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