Reviews THE PROMISE. And so we revisit the conundrum of the historical drama, tangled with as recently as last week regarding The Zookeeper’s Wife. Again, a movie takes as its setting a horrific 20th century catastrophe — this time the outbreak of World War I and the Armenian genocide — and attempts to capture a […]
Broadway Cinema
Posted inArts + Scene
Escape/Escapism
REVIEWS THE ZOOKEEPER’S WIFE. Period drama can, and in this case does, provide a respite from the breakneck editing and handheld camerawork that have subsumed the modern cinematic lexicon. It can give its creators an opportunity to focus on details of set design and costuming and language that, in a contemporary setting, might not merit […]
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Cringeworthy
TONI ERDMANN. I pride myself on an appreciation of bizarre cinema, from camp to cult to psychedelic to oddball. It’s not that I’m steely — plenty of genre films leave me unnerved or nonplussed. I cannot claim to understand Mulholland Drive or have particularly liked Holy Motors; nor are the charms of a blockbuster or […]
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The Old You
Reviews DONALD CRIED. For a small group of us who began refining — or at least establishing, as refinement may or may not have anything to do with it — our cinematic palates in the 1990s, this movie will carry with it some familiar modes and tones. Borne of the same non-movement that would eventually […]
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Motivation
Reviews LIFE. Offered a movie combining a screenplay by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, of Deadpool (2016) and Zombieland (2009), and the direction of Daniel Espinosa (Safe House, 2012), one would not necessarily expect that movie to be dark, scary or at times meditative. Nor could one be faulted for being surprised that that movie, […]
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A Big, Hairy Deal
Reviews BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. The centralization of American popular cinema continues, with Disney squarely in the rich middle of it: Lucasfilm, Pixar and Marvel Studios all live within the shadow of the Magic Kingdom. This means seemingly every mainstream movie without an R rating is likely to have had the Mouse’s big padded hands […]
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Creatures Great and Small
Reviews KEDI. As I age, I see the argument of “cat people” versus “dog people” as an ever more specious one. People will continue to use it to lever their own personal prejudices, of course; such is humanity. But the underlying notion of the innate superiority of one species of furry four-legged thing over another […]
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Battle Scars
Reviews LOGAN. I’ll keep the preamble brief because, if memory serves, I wind up saying essentially the same thing every time a new Marvel movie comes out. As time wears on, and the scale of the Marvel cinematic universe (as well as that of the movies within it) grows ever more (forgive me) cartoonish, I […]
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Sinister Elements
Reviews GET OUT. My (relatively) recent enthusiasm for modern independent horror movies seemed to be on a precipitous slide toward its nadir of late. It was a startling thing to discover, years ago, that directors like James Wan (whom I had written off as part of the cynical torture-porn boom) and producers like Jason Blum […]
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Lightning Round
Reviews OSCAR ANIMATED SHORTS. Aliens, seabirds, alcoholics and the headless can be seen among the eight animated short films nominated for this year’s Oscars, films that range from delightful to disturbing. The program opens with Borrowed Time, a beautifully animated 3-D movie by two Pixar animators about a suicidal sheriff with a painful past, and […]