ANIMALS. Setting aside, at least for the moment, his acting and his frequently very public private life, let us consider Ben Affleck as director. Making a startlingly surefooted debut with Gone Baby Gone (2007), which benefitted from Denis Lehane’s solid source novel, he then delivered The Town (2009), a riveting Boston bank-robbery/class-struggle picture that just […]
Screens
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A Very del Toro Spooky Season
Last week, I took advantage of the re-release of writer and director Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) in theaters to see it on the big (well, bigger) screen. The strange, sad, dreamy marvel of it bears as many rewatches as a person’s heart can take. Like so much of del Toro’s catalogue, even those […]
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‘Digger’ Devastates
DIGGER. The truth is that I didn’t think I would enjoy Digger. Even more than that, I had assumed that it would disappoint me: a stickler for the psychological battery that characterizes the realist landscapes of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s pre-2010s catalogue. I saw the trailers and was quick to write the movie off as another […]
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Predators and Survival
PRIMETIME.In the early 21st century, there was a weird man who created a weird show. He was/is Chris Hansen, and the show was To Catch a Predator, an ethically dubious hidden-camera entrapment program ostensibly designed to apprehend pedophiles but also, as we learn from this fictionalized account, to beat Lost in the Nielsens. The prickly […]
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Reckless Freaks
I WANT YOUR SEX. The milieu of contemporary “fine” art, pinioned as it is to its own ironic self-importance, has always been ripe for satire, with cinema as appropriate a vehicle for it as any. Going back to the olden days of the mid-20th century, when movies were splintering into factions and movements, the outsider […]
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Explode, Don’t Tell
FUZE. Given the death of concise action-oriented picture-stories currently on offer, the promise of such a thing, particularly with movie stars in the cast and a reliable director in charge, is even more compelling than it once was. Factoring in the presence of explosives and a daring heist in the middle of a major metropolitan […]
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‘Onslaught’ Shoots Wide of the Mark
ONSLAUGHT. The trailer for A24’s Onslaught had plenty of flashing signs indicating “slasher movie ahead.” And yet, the plot, as much as a splatter-fest requires one, specifies a former Army sharpshooter defending her daughter when they stumble upon genetically rigged killing machines. How could I keep from getting geared up for a woman-on-a-mission/mom-against-the-world action movie, particularly […]
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‘Idiots’ and ‘Buddy’
IDIOTS. The promise of an R-rated, “gross-out” comedy, especially one anointed for theatrical release, is especially tempting (if equally risky) in an era of corporate trepidation and hobbled creativity. What was once a proven, often overly relied-on subgenre has become risky, a niche proposition unlikely to yield the sort of box-office windfall upon which studios […]
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“Tony” Makes Me Hungry
TONY. “The movie is about growing out of your childhood nickname and becoming who you’re supposed to be,” director Matt Johnson told CNN about his recent feature, Tony. Anthony Bourdain needs little introduction, but if a person were to go into this film with little understanding of Bourdain’s career and legacy, I imagine they’d leave with […]
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You Might Go Home Again
GAIL DAUGHTRY AND THE CELEBRITY SEX PASS. Wet Hot American Summer (2001) is as much a tenet of my marriage as any of the shared values upon which it is founded. For a quarter century, it has been a source of solace, celebration and common ground unlike any other for my wife and I. It […]
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“Super Troopers 3” Keeps it Stupid
SUPER TROOPERS 3. One might rightfully wonder — as I did, while watching Straight Time (1978) on the Criterion Channel on Saturday Night — if there is any reason to go see a third installment of a willfully dumb cop-comedy franchise. At best, it seems unlikely to add anything to the cinematic lexicon (or even […]
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In On the Joke
THE DINK. Awash as we are in a new wave of underdog sports comedies, usually centered on has-beens or never-weres, it should come as no surprise that Pickleball should have shuffled into the crosshairs. The newfound passion of a generation, what was once a middle-school time-filler has become, in this age of idleness and catastrophe, […]