FREAKY TALES. Sometimes good things do happen. Not geopolitically, it would seem, but at least occasionally at the multiplex. With zero foreknowledge, I stumbled across the poster for Freaky Tales, emblazoned in neon green and tantalizing us (especially we NorCal kids of a certain age) with the tagline, “In 1987 Oakland was hella freaky.” OK, […]
Screens
Posted inArts + Scene
Death of a Unicorn‘s Satirical Magic
DEATH OF A UNICORN. Magical realism is, pun intended, one of the trickier genres to both execute as a creator and to navigate as observer/reader/audience. Because it relies even more heavily on suspension of disbelief than its really only slightly less fantastical cohort, we in the cheap seats need a cohesive, compelling vision to allow […]
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Leigh’s Soft Touch in Hard Truths
HARD TRUTHS. Loath as I am to contribute to the ongoing erosion of the cinematic theatrical experience, and legitimately intriguing as Ash or Locked or Novocaine may seem — genre exercises, all, with promising hints of 21st century cheek and worldliness — circumstances will intrude. And so, for now, I’ve missed Flying Lotus’ undoubtedly singular […]
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Black Bag Keeps its Secrets
BLACK BAG. Decades ago, I read a story in which a couple was described as having a “daunting conjugal bond.” It has since been the only scale by which my husband and I, mostly joking, measure our relationship. Are we, different though we are, seamlessly united against everyone at this table, in this restaurant? Is […]
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Trouble in Paradise
PARADISE. There are two kinds of people: those who do not see most of the twists and revelations coming in the eight episodes of the Hulu thriller series Paradise, and goddamn liars. A possible subgroup would be those intent on ruining their own unstudied response by focusing on what puzzles writers might come up with, […]
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September 5 Goes Live
SEPTEMBER 5. Being of a certain age and something of a masochist, trigger warnings aren’t really my thing. Times being what they are, though, it only seems appropriate in this case to preface these remarks with the disclaimer that September 5 centers its narrative on one of the more broadly visible events in the ongoing […]
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The MonkeyGets Weird
THE MONKEY. My close reading of Stephen King — now three quarters of a lifetime ago, was defined by morbid curiosity — a fascination with the seemingly endless, dark wellspring of the author’s imagination. The books were scary, sure, but they were also compelling for their weirdness and perversity and examination of Evil as an […]
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Nickel Boys‘ Powerful Perspective
NICKEL BOYS. There is a school of thought among filmmakers (Friedkin springs to mind, probably some of the French New Wavers), which holds that the camera must have a distinct point of view, that it cannot simply be an omniscient third-party observer. This flies in the face of some deeply held values among cineastes (read: […]
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Bloody Hearts
COMPANION. If you’re not vigilant, you can fall into a genre beat, as I seem to have with robot lady movies. Looks like I’ll be seeing them all, for better or worse, though Companion has landed far on the “better” side of the factory floor. Doll-like Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and Josh (Jack Quaid) meet oh-so-cute […]
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The Brutalist‘s Hard Edges
THE BRUTALIST. Although the nerd wires have been hotly humming for what seems like years, the arrival of Brady Corbet’s prospective magnum opus has felt decidedly anticlimactic here in the hinterland. Granted, most small towns lack a 70mm projector to do justice to the movie’s vaunted, arcane Vista Vision format, and the matinee crowd with […]
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PresenceMakes Itself Known
PRESENCE. I wouldn’t want to testify to it, but I would be willing to bet Steven Soderbergh has made more movies after falsely — but probably sincerely, at the time — announcing his retirement from that very pursuit than before. Just as I can’t say exactly when he issued that dire dictum, I would not […]
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Wolf Man‘s Incomplete Transformation
WOLF MAN. Almost five years ago now, the new plague looming as the presumptive worst thing that could happen in the next however-long — were we ever so innocent? — the release of writer-director Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man prompted me to both lament the rather dismal roll-out of Universal’s ostensible monster series reboot (The […]