The divided title of Escobar: Paradise Lost reveals the essential problem with writer/director Andrea Di Stefano’s film – that’s it’s aspiring to be two different films that don’t always cohere. One aspiration is to portray the larger than life story …Read more
The charge against our culture of sequels is usually that it’s cravenly commercial and leads to derivative rehashes of popular films. But what if you took a film that wasn’t popular in the first place, gave it to another director, took little beyond …Read more
Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party succeeds through paradoxes: it’s a coming of age story, but it all takes place in one day’s time, it’s mostly the story of one individual, Henry Gamble, but to tell that story truthfully it must use a large ensemble of c …Read more
Just like the lives of its characters, Infinitely Polar Bear is a triumphant balancing act. It’s a period piece that feels utterly contemporary. It handles issues such as living with mental illness, mixed-race families, and female breadwinners, but i …Read more
Madame Bovary is a disarmingly simple story – the wife of a provincial doctor grows bored and unsatisfied in life before her search for passion leads to tragedy – but the inner life of Emma Bovary is so complex and finely drawn that it continues to e …Read more
In Welcome to Me, director Shira Piven, writer Eliot Laurence, and star Kristen Wiig delve into the strange underbelly of our media landscape, exploring the intoxicating blend of exploitation, exhibitionism, and emotional neediness that power the mac …Read more
Doomsdays, the debut feature from critic turned director Eddie Mullins, transforms the vacation homes of the Catskills into a staging ground for two men preparing for the imminent apocalypse. Dirty Fred (Justin Rice) and Bruho (Leo Fitzpatrick) live …Read more
Andrew Bujalski’s Results fixes his unflinching gaze on the trainers and trainees of Power4Life, a gym in suburban Austin, TX. The gym as a sphere of human activity occupies more prominence in peoples’ lives than ever, but has remained more or less …Read more
Despite growing in prominence and production value, the films of director Bob Byington remain completely sui generis, marked by a tone as distinct as any filmmaker working today. His latest film, 7 Chinese Brothers, is no exception, marked by his ble …Read more
Director Bob Byington has become a stalwart of the American independent scene, with films like RSO, Harmony and Me, and Somebody Up There Likes Me. His new film, 7 Chinese Brothers, stars Jason Schwartzman and his dog as Larry and Arrow, a pair of sl …Read more
