An intermittently intriguing exercise in designer depravity, Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool, about a failed novelist on a seaside vacation turned tour of hell, is gripping fun until it isn’t. It has its merits—chiefly very good performances by Alexander Skarsgård and Mia Goth—but wears out…
Read MoreIt’s that time of year again—when Oscar casts his golden glow on the highest achievements of the movie year (or at least those with the largest publicity budgets). Who made the list? Who was snubbed? What do the nominations tell us about who or…
Read MoreThe Artist Will Find a Way: In No Bears, Imprisoned Iranian Filmmaker Jafar Panahi Takes on Art, Life and Fundamentalism
The picture is an unmistakable critique of slavish devotion to small town articles of faith and the dangers of violating such credos, and a rebuke to small minded fears of the outside world.…
Read MoreCorsage: As a Rebellious Empress, a Smart Vicky Krieps Intrigues as Woman Out of Time
The notion of women punching their way through the predetermined confines of male orders and role restrictions has never, at any point in time, not seemed of its current moment. It’s also an urgent theme in many a novel or film as women challenge…
Read MoreThe January movie landscape (often referred to as “the dumping ground”) is typically not synonymous with intelligence and discernment, particularly amongst the usual crop of horror pictures that kick off each new year. Yet those qualities are exactly the drivers of the cautionary new…
Read MoreWith the End Nigh, Bill Nighy Keeps on Living in Affirming Character and Mortality Study
I recently endured a milestone birthday which felt like a sort of dividing line—one of those everything before/after demarcations forcing, for perhaps the first time in my adult life, a realization of being “on the other side” of the proverbial hill. How to best…
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