(Streaming on Netflix.) Most of us don’t have the exact problems that Alice in Cam has because most of us aren’t webcam performers who make a living doing sexy shows online for tips (not that we’re judging). But this intriguing if underdeveloped thriller from first-time director Daniel Goldhaber and screenwriter Isa Mazzei has cautionary lessons for […]
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On the surface, it would be almost too easy to dismiss the women of Widows as oblivious, naive, helpless, or – worst of all – dumb. But therein lies the brilliance and thematic intricacy of Steve McQueen’s latest film – a ferocious and sophisticated reimagining of the BBC miniseries that starred Helen Mirren. McQueen’s Widows moves the […]
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I have a VHS problem. They are my Chapstick; bought frequently, replaced before sufficient use, and lost from my pockets as collateral damage when I retrieve change overzealously. Adventures in Home Video™ is an attempt to subsidize that problem and justify its consuming ruin by digging into three loosely connected, barely discussed VHS tapes that […]
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The Front Runner, Jason Reitman’s political dramedy and light satire about Gary Hart, is set in a quaint, bygone era when adultery could derail a politician’s career and when there were no news networks trying to fill 24 hours of programming each day. Things are different now, but the film, mostly a straightforward account of […]
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Much has been said about the relationship between Luca Guadagnino’s new remake of Suspiria and Dario Argento’s 1977 original. Guadagnino has taken the skeleton of the story — which concerns an American who joins a prestigious German dance academy only to discover it’s run by a coven of witches — and refashioned it to reflect […]
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He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. G.I. Joe. Transformers. Thundercats. Smurfs. M.A.S.K. Rainbow Brite. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. My Buddy. Cabbage Patch Kids. These are just a few toy lines that were popular, along with their attendant multimedia franchises, in the second half of the 1980s. Mention these names to someone who was a […]
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Armistice Day 2018 — at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month — will mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, when the guns fell silent over Europe. WWI ushered in an age of profound geopolitical and sociological change. Coincident to the conflict, cinema was entering an […]
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Hard to imagine what could have given filmmakers in 2018 the idea that moviegoers want to see Nazis get killed, but hey, we’ll take ’em. Overlord, a violent, horror-tinged, sci-fi take on Germany’s World War II atrocities, recalls the Nazisploitation flicks of the ’60s and ’70s grindhouse circuit, except that it’s from the point of […]
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It’s a tale as old as time — or at least as old as 1957, when Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! was first published: A mean, green, potbellied curmudgeon comes up with a plan to steal Christmas from his annoyingly festive neighbors. Despite a contemporary soundtrack punctuated by hip-hop tracks, the new animated […]
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From the opening credits, it’s clear that director Fede Alvarez hopes audiences will draw comparisons between The Girl in the Spider’s Web and the James Bond films. With its overly stylish opening credits, Alvarez’s sorta-sequel to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo isn’t so much interested in evoking its predecessor (why bother?) as it is […]
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Fifty years ago, at the height of their popularity as television personalities and platinum-selling recording artists, The Monkees — Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith, and Peter Tork — attempted to break free from the strictures of the personae that had been crafted for them over the two seasons their eponymous sitcom had been on […]
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I’m far from the first one to point this out, but Bohemian Rhapsody — a biopic of Freddie Mercury (and, to a lesser extent, the band he fronted, known as Queen) — is the sort of watered-down pablum that should be embarrassed to show its face in a world where Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story exists. Somewhat […]
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