SUMMER OF SOUL (… OR, WHEN THE REVOLUTION COULD NOT BE TELEVISED). Intimates might wonder (fairly) at my desire to watch and ramble on about a concert movie. I’ve shared freely my general discomfort and occasional disappointment at the live music experience with those unfortunate enough to have to listen, for years beyond counting. It’s […]
Minor Theatre
Posted inArts + Scene
Retro Dread Redux
REVIEWS FALSE POSITIVE. To dispense with it at the outset: Yes, Rosemary’s Baby (1968) is part of the conversation. It has been for more than half a century. It arguably invented — or at least created a lasting identity for — mainstream American horror movies and, in so doing, created its own ripple-effect of sub-genres […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Funny Girls
REVIEWS GOOD ON PAPER. I usually don’t like it when comedians make movies because they’re seldom as funny as their stand-up routines. I get that they want to break out of the boxes we have put them in (or they have put themselves in) but it’s never the same. Still, Iliza Shleslinger is by far […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Me, Myself and I
REVIEWS BO BURNHAM: INSIDE. I don’t think I’m alone in having harbored hope that the past year — not to mention the four year season in purgatory preceding it — might give rise to a flowering of reactive art and culture. Maybe a period of collective isolation and simultaneous awakening, of tumult and unrest and […]
Posted inArts + Scene
SueñitosCome True
REVIEWS IN THE HEIGHTS. There was a scene in In the Heights where everyone from the Washington Heights neighborhood came together to sing, many from different Latin American countries, all immensely proud of where they were from. In the song “Carnaval del Barrio,” there’s a lyric that reads, “Pa’ribba esa bandera! Alzala donde quiera! Recuerdo […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Power Couple
REVIEWS THE CONJURING 3: THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT. When The Exorcist (1977) aired on television in 1980, I watched it from the cracked pleather recliner I was still small enough to share with my grandmother, who loved supernatural horror and evidently didn’t put much stock in movie ratings. It was even more terrifying […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Back to the Big Screen
REVIEWS I certainly didn’t plan for it but I wasn’t alone: Apparently something in the collective consciousness motivated great droves of us in the same direction. Maybe the denial/resignation I observed setting in six months ago has finally become as contagious as the virus that was and is its subject. Vaccination and the promise of […]
Posted inArts + Scene
The Poverty of Excess
REVIEWS It has been, oh, 14 and a half months since I last went to the movies. The opportunity has arisen, recently, with the advent of COVID-19 vaccines and, before that, a collective denial/resignation/relaxing of the guard due to fatigue, frustration and, in some cases, willful ignorance. But because of the embarrassment of riches brought […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Adaptation and Survival
REVIEWS THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD. I put a lot of stock in Taylor Sheridan. His screenplays for Sicario (2015), Hell or High Water (2016) and Wind River (2017) — the last of which was his directorial debut — describe a reverence, healthy fear and morbid fascination with the New American West. His work encompasses […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Easttown and Down
MARE OF EASTTOWN. Given the velocity at which I jettisoned myself from my own beat-down East Coast hometown full of salt-rusted cars and muddy yards, it’s a little surprising how drawn I am to the world of Easttown. The grim, fictional composite of Pennsylvania towns in which HBO’s detective miniseries takes place is south of […]
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Hominids and Homicide
SASQUATCH. I imagined a collective groan when trailers for Hulu’s Sasquatch rolled across screens on the North Coast. Another exploitative, sensationalist “documentary” on the Emerald Triangle to make a buck off a bunch of curious outsiders, great. That wouldn’t be unfair, given the impact of Murder Mountain. We’re a proud and insular bunch, not necessarily […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Stowaway’s Taut Drama
I didn’t watch the Academy Awards broadcast this year; from what I’ve read, you likely didn’t either. That I say I don’t care about the Oscars, seeing them as increasingly culturally insignificant and out of step, and yet feel compelled to constantly mention them in this context is something I wrestle with. In fact, I […]