In their new film She Rides Shotgun, director Nick Rowland and actor Taron Egerton deliver a tense experience fusing the grit and danger of a crime picture with the vulnerability of a fractured father-daughter relationship. Adapted from the novel by Jordan Harper, the story…
Read MoreHook, Line and (Mostly) Sinker: Nostalgia is a Killer in I Know What You Did Last Summer Reboot
Nostalgia can be a wonderfully horrible thing, especially when what’s being romanticized rarely lines up with reality. Such is the case with the new I Know What You Did Last Summer, an attempt to resurrect a ’90s slasher franchise that was competent enough, sure—but…
Read More“I live in a state of dread”: Ari Aster on Eddington, His Provocative Theater of American Collapse
Ari Aster’s Eddington is unlike anything else this year in its sprawling attempt to reckon with the fractured state of American life in 2020. Set in a fictional town in New Mexico, the film follows a slow-burning conflict between a conservative sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix)…
Read MoreAcross four films, 38-year-old writer-director Ari Aster has emerged as one of the most distinctive voices in American cinema. Breaking out with 2018’s trauma thriller Hereditary and 2019’s pagan horror Midsommar, Aster took a turn with the surreal 2023 panic attack Beau Is Afraid. Tonally disparate but thematically linked,…
Read MoreAfter the Very Bad Thing: Sorry, Baby Finds Grace in the Quietly Powerful Eva Victor
Writer-director Eva Victor’s Sorry, Baby, winner of this year’s Sundance Film Festival screenwriting prize, is a deceptively modest indie, one made in spare style but delivering a quietly powerful punch in confronting the long-term fallout of sexual assault. Trauma splits life into a before…
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