Now Playing: “Doctor Strange”
We’re eight years in to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the house style has been well established. As the series’ tent-pole entries leading up to Joss Whedon’s The Avengers (2012) went on, any...
View ArticleNow Playing: “I Am Not Madame Bovary”
Painterly, when used as an adjective to describe a film, is often rather nebulously employed to evoke that the movie in question possesses the quality of being “like a painting.” But what makes a film...
View ArticleNow Playing: “Jackie”
It’s telling that, in the days since my first viewing, the lasting impression of Pablo Larraín’s Jackie has been to remind me of another semi-recent biographical film, Experimenter (2015) in which...
View ArticleNow Playing: “Neruda”
My first memory of being aware of Pablo Neruda is from when I was 13, around the time I discovered the Rent Broadway cast recording. In the first act’s closing number, “La Vie Boheme,” the musical’s...
View ArticleThe New Sequel
Of the write-ups that have been published in the lead-up to its release, none have been more indicative of the confusion surrounding the nebulous status of Rogue One in the Star Wars franchise than the...
View ArticleNow Playing: “Paterson”
Nobody: Every night and every morn, some to misery are born. Every morn and every night, some are born to sweet delight. Some are born to sweet delight; some are born to endless night. ~ Dead Man (Jim...
View ArticleNow Playing “100 Streets”
We need to talk about Idris Elba. Specifically, we need to talk about the unfortunate trends that have characterized his movie career as of late. In this post-The Wire and post-Luther period, Elba has...
View ArticleNow Playing: “The Salesman”
I’ve often thought that the only people who care less about the Academy Awards than film critics and Oscar pundits, both of whom annually sound off on each year’s round of nominations, are the Oscar...
View ArticleNow Playing: “Fifty Shades Darker”
“Think of it as delayed gratification,” Dakota Johnson purrs at Jamie Dornan at one point in the sequel to the film adaptation of the much-ballyhooed erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey. In resisting...
View ArticleNow Playing: “The Girl With All The Gifts”
I’ve grown tired of zombies. With The Walking Dead currently standing as AMC’s most watched show, the sub-genre has been tinkered with to death (un-death?) from straight retellings to comedic...
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