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Six Virgins, One Suicide: Coming Of Age In Turkey &‘Brooklyn’
America is a land of opportunity, beckoning thousands across the globe to come to these shores in celebration of freedom and liberty. If you’re a cute white girl from Ireland, at least. Yes, it’s an...
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‘Hateful’ Dead: The Eighth-Best Film By Quentin Tarantino
I’m not a total Tarantino fanboy, because I’m not generally a fan of any filmmaker who keeps making different variations of the same movie. (I have this problem with Wes Anderson, too.) Some people...
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The Tens: Best Of Film 2015
“Inspired by the true stories of daring women.” That’s the title card that precedes David O. Russell’s Joy, the story of an entrepreneur who becomes a titan of the Home Shopping Network. But it would...
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Bear-Man, Or The Expected Tragedies Of Awards Season: ‘Son Of Saul’&‘The...
(Plenty of spoilers in this review… though you’ve probably heard most of them already.) Here’s a fun game of “Would You Rather?”: 1. Would you rather be Saul, a Hungarian-Jew tasked with cleaning up...
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An Indisputable Ranking Of Every Steven Spielberg Movie, From Fine To Phenomenal
Let me tell you about a guy named Spielberg. In my estimation, Steven Spielberg is the most popular, successful, and recognizable filmmaker of all time. He has more films in the AFI 100 than any other...
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The Not-Oscars 2015
Every year, the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences releases a roster of the pictures and performances they think are most deserving of accolades. And every year, I put together this list to...
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No, Seriously, Take Shelter: Jeff Nichols Cooks Up A ‘Midnight Special’
(I knew next to nothing about Midnight Special going in, and if you’re curious at all and haven’t yet seen the trailer, I recommend you follow suit. I’ll give a general overview and then a fair warning...
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Doris And The Dudes: Showalter And Linklater Hatch Horny Spring Comedies
We’re living in a wacky movie world these days. The third highest grossing film of this year so far is also one of the biggest disappointments — Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice plummeted in its...
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Wrecking Bawl: The Car Crash Grief Porn Of ‘Louder Than Bombs’&‘Demolition’
There are roughly 3,000 automobile deaths in America each year, and it feels like we see at least twice that many in the movies. Car accidents are the go-to tragedy for Hollywood, even moreso than...
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Mouth A Little Weak: Chet Baker’s ‘Blue’ Valentine
The biopic is a well-worn genre, especially when it comes to musicians. Marion Cotillard, Sissy Spacek, Jamie Foxx, and Reese Witherspoon have won Oscars playing notable musical artists, and plenty...
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Animal Attraction: Monogamy Is Tested In ‘A Bigger Splash’&‘The Lobster’
Tilda Swinton is a rock star. Few serious film fans would argue with this, but in Luca Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash, it’s literally true. Swinton plays Marianne Lane, a musician who appears to be some...
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Where You Live.
Where you live. Where you learn. Where you pray. Where you drink. It’s happened again. We ask questions like, “How could this happen?” “When does this end?” and “What can we do?” and the answers are:...
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Eye Of The Beholder: Beauty Bares Its Teeth In ‘The Neon Demon’
I’ve seen a lot of movies. A lot of them contain some pretty shocking stuff. I don’t necessarily like gore or explicitly disturbing subject matter, but my cinematic journeys often lead me toward such...
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Oops, She’s Still Got It: Britney Spears’‘Glory’ Actually Is Glorious
What a relief: we don’t have to worry about Britney Spears anymore. Britney’s had her much-publicized ups and downs — both in her personal life and her musical career, though not necessarily at the...
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The Perils Of Being A Wallflower: Outcasts Pay The Price In ‘Indignation’
Forgive me. I know it seems much too early to talk about the Oscars, but we’re getting into that time of year now. So far, 2016 has been all but entirely barren of buzzworthy performances. I have a...
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When We Were Young Podcast, Episode 1: We Got Cows!
Hold on to something! The When We Were Young podcast’s pilot episode glances back at everyone’s favorite cow-tossing summer blockbuster, Twister, to see if the windiest divorce drama of all time holds...
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When We Were Young, Episode 2: A Serious Cackling
In October of 1994, three podcasters disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland. Police were baffled by the podcasters’ vanishing… mostly because they did not yet know what a podcast was. A...
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When We Were Young: What’s The Best Piece Of Pop Culture From The 80s & 90s?
Hello, friends! We’ve now aired three episodes of the When We Were Young podcast, which means it’s officially time to start uselessly ranking things. That’s right — because I am a millennial (barely),...
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Harmonious And Productive (When We Were Young, Episode 3)
A competent, ambitious, and some-might-say-chilly blonde who thinks she’s got this election in the bag goes up against unlikely opponents who are unqualified and uninformed, but hold an anarchic appeal...
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Black, White & Wed: A Difficult Year Gets Some Much-Needed ‘Loving’
It’s impossible to ignore the year 2016 when talking about Loving, a film that takes place between 1958 and 1967 and depicts the lives of the titular couple at the center of one of the Supreme Court’s...
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