By Rod Lott. A crime thriller that goes through the genre’s motions without providing much of a snap of tension.” I have a theory: The Silencing was engineered in the scripting stage in hopes of landing Viggo Mortensen. Not only does its actual star, the cost-effective Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, look similar […]
“We Like it When the Characters Fail”: Claes Bang on Bay of Silence
As an actor, you like when a character has both sides – when you actually are terrified but try to keep your calm.” By Gary M. Kramer. Claes Bang excels at playing suave, amoral men. His breakout performance in The Square, pivoted on his smug museum curator getting his comeuppance. […]
Satire with Training Wheels: Eugene Kotlyarenko’s Spree
A satire which settles for hitting the same easy target (social media = bad) over and over again – a horror exercise without scares” By Thomas Puhr. The horrific lengths to which some will go for even a fleeting glimpse of internet “fame” inspires public disgust and fascination alike. Netflix’s […]
These Kids Are Alright: Boys State
By Elias Savada. Politics these days are more decisive than ever. A day doesn’t go by without “someone” threatening to bring down the system of government another notch into a seemingly bottomless abyss. Maybe our future leaders will have a better understanding in the years ahead, although I often wonder […]
Uninhabitable Women: On Carlo Mirabella-Davis’s Swallow
It comes as no surprise that Hunter develops pica. The compulsion mirrors her entrapment: like the lifestyle being forced down her throat, the first object, a pretty red marble, goes down smooth….” By Zoe Kurland. What is it with thrillers and mid-century modern homes? There has long been a love […]
Few Wounds Examined: Ramona S. Diaz’s A Thousand Cuts
A Thousand Cuts doesn’t grapple with such global issues as much as it name checks them.” By Thomas Puhr. A sobering reminder that 21st-century demagoguery is not limited to the West, Ramona S. Diaz’s A Thousand Cuts (2020) focuses on two diametrically-opposed figures: Rodrigo Duterte, current President of the Philippines, […]
Characters in the “Stocks”: Paydirt
Paydirt feels more like fast food than haute cuisine.” By Ali Moosavi. Christian Sesma, the writer-director of Paydirt, has certainly an interesting resume. Already a successful restaurateur from Palm Springs, he also made “HBO’s first under-a-million-dollar action film acquired in over a decade.” The resume also informs us he has made a […]
A Visual Stylist’s Potboiler: Brian De Palma and Susan Lehman’s Are Snakes Necessary?
A Book Review by Ali Moosavi. My guess is that co-writer Lehman would have been at ease with sections dealing with the press and politics, while the sex and murder are products of De Palma’s imagination.” At the ripe old age of 79, that best known disciple of Hitchcock, Brian […]
Siberia and the Ascension of Abel Ferrara
Ferrara is determinedly consistent in his devotion to his core visions, and as hungry as ever to discover new ways to express them.” By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. At some point over the last decade, my initially half-jokingly insistence that Abel Ferrara had become the thinking person’s Lars Von Trier became less […]
Art as Life Practice: Alejandro Jodorowsky on Psychomagic: A Healing Art
[Psychomagic] is an art, not a science. I make all the art.” By Gary M. Kramer. Chilean cult filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky has always been a cine-magician. He made his feature debut with the surrealistic Fando and Lis (1968) and then achieved worldwide attention for his cult films, El Topo (1970) […]