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Noirish ‘THE BATMAN’ Reveals Man Swallowed By Mask

We’ve seen the man become the bat plenty of times. In Matt ReevesThe Batman, we see the bat become a man again. The Batman, a singularly gloomy noir caper that feels stylistically more akin to Se7en than The Dark Knight, presents one of the most distinctive versions of the iconic “superhero” (that term is used very loosely here) to ever grace the screen. Reeves’ vision is a far cry from the rinse-repeat superhero fare that so frequently pummels their way through the multiplexes. There’s sparse humor or frivolity and even less charm. As much as Batman can be grounded, stripped down to his essence as a character, and seen for the disturbed outsider that he truly is, this is what Reeves seeks to accomplish. And he largely does just that.   Read More

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Blockbusting Bore ‘TENET’ Revels In Nolan’s Worst Instincts

Christopher Nolan’s fascination with time as a storytelling variable is well-documented throughout his filmography. In his breakout indie hit Memento, the story of John G and his murdered wife ran backwards with consecutive scenes taking place before what we have just watched; with Inception, dreams within dreams meant that different levels of the film’s universe occurred at different speeds creating a kind of temporal layer cake; and most recently, Dunkirk saw a major military event unfold over land, sea, and air in a matter of a week, a day and an hour, respectively, the various timelines intersecting and blending into one another. And the less said about Interstellar, wherein Nolan got all mushy over time and love, the better. This obsession with time as a resource and narrative centerpiece has finally gotten the best of Nolan in Tenet, an overblown blockbuster absolutely suffocated by tricks, bloated by exposition and wholly lacking in a human touch.  Read More

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Roommates are Awful, Especially in Eggers’ Brilliant ‘THE LIGHTHOUSE’

In the rundown of worst roommate habits, persistent flatulence has to rank pretty highly. But I can’t imagine even the gnarliest gas could possibly compete with the sour stench of stale pee stewing in a bedpan in a tight communal space. Which brings us to The Lighthouse, a film wherein, from the first moments, odors assert themselves. The celluloid reeks of old piss, beefy farts, caked-up spunk, “rotten foreskin”, man musk, and drinkable kerosene. This is a movie that would tear down the house in Smell-O-Vision. Fortunately, we do not have to endure its reek. Read More

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Robert Pattinson Becomes An Astronaut Dad Aboard Spacey Psychosexual ‘HIGH LIFE’

Throughout the 1960s and 70s, United States prisoners became the victim of scientific research the country over. A new golden age of scientific progress demanded countless scores of human lab rats to test medications, creams, deodorants, etc. on and who better to experiment with than a captive population with rock bottom demands for their participation. The new film from French filmmaker Claire Denis is a response to the age of the Stanford Prison Experiment as High Life blasts a vessel loaded with death row criminals into the stratosphere to see what happens. But even that minimalist description can’t set the stage for what is in store with this hairy meditation on humanity and scientific progress.  Read More

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Out in Theaters: ‘DAMSEL’

Absurdist indie western Damsel puts a feminist spin on the genre, smuggling jet black gallow’s humor into this romance-tinged quest for love lost. The Zellner have long cherished strangeness and it comes in no shortage here. Quirky and well-acted, Damsel is a call and response to the Westerns of yesteryear, a full-brunted hard-left on familiar genre tropes that is quite often darkly funny and dramatically tragic.  Read More

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Out in Theaters: THE ROVER

With Animal Kingdom, David Michôd proved that Australia had a place at the table when discussing great new cinematic voices globally (and all but introduced the world to Ben Mendelsohn, Joel Edgerton and Jackie Weaver). With The Rover, he’s taken the next step towards auteurship in a stripped-down, sand-blasted, shaggily-moraled, post-apocalyptic Western saga. In it, Robert Pattinson‘s star shines bright, offering the best performance of the year so far and one certainly worth of chatter come Oscar season. It’s magical enough that Michôd has culled a truly jaw-dropping performance from the oft reviled Twilight icon (who was also strong in Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis) but his minimalist take on what remains after society crumbles is a rawhide-tough slice of devastation pie. Read More