Todd Haynes’ deliciously dark melodrama sees Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman go head-to-head as a housewife and the woman tasked with playing her in a film. Adding melodrama to the seemingly endless list of genres he can turn his hand to, Todd Haynes creates a thorny, completely compelling feature from Samy Burch’s acerbic script in […]
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Scene: One sweaty summer in 1950s New Orleans, a tearful, brittle Southern Belle faces accusations of promiscuity from a suitor. He’s discovered this genteel teacher is “not clean enough” to take home to Mother. Seeing her possible meal ticket disintegrate, Blanche (played with grotesque delicacy by Vivien Leigh), stalks forward through the makeshift boudoir that […]
Continue ReadingThe visionary Indian director behind modern cult favourite The Fall reflects on the film finding its audience after 17 years, and the production of Dear Jassi – his first feature film in almost a decade. There are few cinematic imaginations as delightfully surreal, as full of wonder, and as critically divisive as the one belonging […]
Continue ReadingA young Buddhist monk and a wizened old man are soaring through the forest, running on air as if weightless. The old man’s white hair and robes stream behind him as he amiably tells the young monk he’s been training for over 200 years. The monk, named Fat-hoi, feigns amiability for a moment longer. “What […]
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Two unpopular lesbians attempt to start a fight club at their high school in Emma Seligman’s disappointing follow-up to Shiva Baby. When David Fincher brought Chuck Palahniuk’s landmark cult novel Fight Club to the big screen in 1999, he created a monster. Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durden became an inspiration to countless disenfranchised men, apparently lacking […]
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In the new Showtime series The Curse, spouses-cum-real-estate-disruptors Asher and Whitney Siegel (Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone) set out to save the environment with carbon-neutral “passive houses” that generate as much energy as they use. An entirely mirrored exterior captures sunlight and converts it to power — though a technician mentions that this could be […]
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At some point or another, while scrolling through YouTube, it’s likely you’ll come across a new trailer for an upcoming film that you’re desperate to watch. Backed by a bona fide banner, a verified account handle and millions of views, you hammer the touchpad. You watch it. And, well, if the creator has done a […]
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As Michael Bay spreads his name across a low-angle shot of a cross being engulfed in flame, it’s clear he knows his place in sacrilegious cinema. Bad Boys II (2003) is a confrontational exercise that scorches all it indulges in. Acidic excess pins the audience within their most vulgar impulses and creates a potent post-9/11 […]
Continue ReadingErotic finance thriller Fair Play starts with a period sex scene, one featuring Phoebe Dynevor’s character Emily hooking up with her fiancé Luke (played by Alden Ehrenreich) at a wedding. Period blood is shown all over her pale pink dress and Luke’s mouth, but is treated like normal bodily fluid. There’s no disgust, no shock, […]
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brandstaetter images//Getty Images A girl in her twenties basks in an apartment in New York City and ruminates on heterosexual love, further intensifying her sense of ennui. She is flooded by one of the following dilemmas: a) existentialism, b) declining mental health mixed with crippling emotional distress, c) alcohol and drug usage, or d) all […]
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