Frank & Lola is a romance/thriller with a unique dual setting of Las Vegas and Paris. I’m not sure how many other movies share this distinction. Now You See Me, maybe? It’s an interesting juxtaposition: the gaudiness of the Vegas strip versus the …Read more
Some cinephiles feel that they’ve seen everything before. There is no movie that hasn’t been done — no formula that hasn’t been treated, picked over, or inverted. This isn’t even touching on the rampant and largely unsuccessful studio preference for …Read more
Jim Jarmusch’s documentary on Iggy Pop and the Stooges plays on the title of the 1970 Maysles brothers’ documentary, Gimme Shelter. That movie was about the tragic free concert put on by The Rolling Stones and Jefferson Airplane, among others, at Alt …Read more
Sky Ladder has one of the better opening lines I’ve heard in a movie all year. We are told (through subtitles) that many centuries ago, while searching for a substance that would give them immortality, the Chinese discovered dynamite. What a great ex …Read more
A Man Called Ove is a Norwegian film based on a Norwegian book whose English translation is doing brisk business in the US. It is about a cranky old man who is “given a new lease on life” upon meeting his spirited new neighbors. It has the sort of sy …Read more
Horror is a genre for jaded and cynical idealists. Theoretically, horror could yield perfect movies — entirely experiential, composed of sight and sound that operate together on a visceral level, with conflict rooted directly in fundamental psycholog …Read more
Director Christian Carion made his name with the 2005 film Joyeux Noël, which told the true story of an unofficial armistice that took place on Christmas of 1914 between French and German troops. The moment might be seen as the last gasp of those who …Read more
Equity opens on investment banker Naomi Bishop (Anna Gunn) in a sushi restaurant with the shots framed so that the slats of the upscale restaurant’s decor look like a cage. Like in any good thriller, the feeling of a cage closing in is an apt opening …Read more
These many things that Love Between the Covers’ documentarian, Laurie Kahn, says are true: First, romance novels bring in a respectable proportion of the publishing industry’s revenue. Second, they are not especially more ‘formulaic’ nor are they qua …Read more
Early on in Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon, a makeup artist (Jena Malone) jokes to the ingénue, Jesse (Elle Fanning), that makeup shades are either named after food or sex, and that every girl must choose to be one or the other. She makes this …Read more
