Nihilism pairs naturally with playing cards semi-professionally. Those hitting the poker circuit know this. The most improbable river (the fifth card in a game of Texas Hold ‘em) can render the best hand and best player a loser in the wings, drawing dead. They just don’t know it yet. It seems that odds are meaningless against the tides of fate. Cold, calculating, and reductive, the best poker players are those who remove the emotional element entirely, stoic ice statues playing odds, preying on the faintest whiff of weakness. The Card Counter, the newest film from auteur Paul Schrader (First Reformed) is a nihilistic meditation on the impossibility of redemption, as a broken military man turned gifted gambler wrestles with his demons around a card table. Read More
Icy Free Solo Doc ‘THE ALPINIST’ Makes Alex Honnold Look Like a Moderate Risk-Taker
The crux of Nick Rosen and Peter Mortimer’s (The Dawn Wall) thrilling new climbing documentary The Alpinist is self-described “true dirtbag” Marc-André Leclerc. Leclerc, a 23-year old Canadian alpine free solo enthusiast-turned-pioneer, is in many ways the antithesis of many modern climbers. Seeking fame is not and never has been his purpose, the documentary beginning with Leclerc as more of a mythical easter egg, a whisper within the upper rungs of the climbing community. Much like The Sparks are “your favorite band’s favorite band”, Leclerc is your favorite climbers’ favorite climber. His bonafides are certified early on when climbing rockstar and Free Solo subject Alex Honnold choses Leclerc when asked who in the climbing world impressed him. Read More
Social Horror ‘CANDYMAN’ Radically Addresses Black Trauma in Brutal Fashion
For what it does right – and it does do plenty right – Bernard Rose’s 1992 cult horror-slasher Candyman feels like a dated product of its racially off-putting times. Hone in on where it focuses the spotlight: Virginia Madsen’s curious and lily white grad student Helen Lyle, out to deconstruct the urban myths of a hook-handed boogeyman terrorizing the Black community. A white woman in distress scouring the trauma of the African-American hood, Helen is a peculiar cypher for a story about the lingering horrors of race. Read More
Fantastical but Flawed ‘SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS’ Expands MCU’s Horizons
Indebted as much to Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as anything within the Marvel Cinematic Universe proper, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is the MCU’s spin on a Wuxia epic. Big fantastical action mixes with Chinese mysticism and Marvel’s signature mood-lightening jokes to create a unique, if imperfect, Marvel experience, one that introduces new characters, powerful Macguffins, new brand of superpowers, and even more hidden worlds to the ever-expanding MCU. Read More
Dystopian Neo-Noir Love Story ‘REMINISCENCE’ Made Me Feel Nothing
If it keeps on raining the levy’s going to break. As sang by Robert Plant so it goes in Reminiscence, Lisa Joy’s stodgy science fiction noir some untold years into a future devastated by climate change and war. As an increasingly uninhabitable earth grows wetter and hotter with each passing year, oceans eat away at what is left of America. The roaring heat of the daytime turns humanity into nocturnal creatures. Dry lands become the new gold standard but greedy barons snap up what they can and leave little for the masses. With populations displaced and growing civil unrest, humanity turns increasingly to memories of yesteryear. Read More
Entertaining ‘THE SUICIDE SQUAD’ Surprisingly Conventional for Comic Book Movie That Weaponizes Polka Dots
Look no further than James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad for proof that superhero media has truly become too big to fail. As legions of old and new, traditional and bizarre, familiar and not-so-familiar heroes position themselves to win out at the box office, as well as, increasingly, on our premium streaming services, comic lore has become the last remaining monocultural tentpole of our current age. Read More
‘JUNGLE CRUISE’ Charters a Noisy, Pun-Fueled Trip Down Familiar Waters
What to say about Jungle Cruise, Disney’s latest attempt to mine existing IP for franchise potential and big box office ducats, that isn’t already implied by its existence? For all intents and purposes, the movie is fine. An unremarkable, CGI-heavy “throwback” to the swashbuckling serials of the 1920’s, Jungle Cruise doesn’t hide its obvious aspirations to turn a Disneyland ride into another major media franchise a la Pirates of the Caribbean. The result is filmmaking as pure commerce, the beancounters at the House of Mouse barely containing their cynicism for audiences who see marquee names and a decently cut trailer and rush to cinemas (or, now, Disney+) to trade in their hard earned dollars for 127 minutes of chiseled, forgettable fantasy-adventure mediocrity. Read More
An Opportunistic Knight Quests in Superbly Crafted, Narratively Adventurous ‘THE GREEN KNIGHT’
David Lowery is a visual poet. Throughout his celebrated career, the Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Pete’s Dragon, and A Ghost Story director has leaned on visual language and unconventional film grammar to connect with audiences, championing the emotional resonance of imagery over traditional narrative structure. In many ways, his films are in the same vein as American auteur Terrence Malick: thoughtful and dense, visually resplendent, whispery tone poems designated strictly for the Film Buff crowd. In that capacity, Lowery suffers Malick’s shortcomings, particularly as it pertains to resting too much within the opaque interiority of his characters and letting plotting fall by the wayside.
Cathartic Documentary ‘ROADRUNNER: A FILM ABOUT ANTHONY BOURDAIN’ Grapples with Dark Profundity
I’d never watched a full episode of any of Anthony Bourdain’s various programs but I knew of and admired the man nonetheless. A New York line cook turned globe-trotting modern day philosopher, Bourdain embodied the idea that travel is a transformative business and Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain reveals a man changed – for the better, and the worse – for it. For Bourdain, a willingness to try anything once coupled with a desire to go to the furthest reaches of the globe to reveal an inner yearning and restlessness. Read More
‘THE FOREVER PURGE’ Is Redundant, Already Behind the Times
Subtlety has never been the aim of James DeMonaco, the writer-director of the first trilogy of Purge flicks as well as screenwriter for the remaining sequels and all-around franchise figurehead, and that’s never been more clear than in The Forever Purge. Claiming to be the final film in the franchise that spawned four sequels and two seasons of a now-cancelled USA Network series, The Forever Purge puts our turbulent American politics front and center, creating a not-too-distant vision where MAGA-inspired insurrectionists continue the “legalized violence” at the film’s center beyond the allowed 12-hour window of the purge. A new dawn brings the continuation of violence as America enters a “forever purge”, a state of bullet-ridden eternal mayhem; a nightmarish ever after of racially-motivated violence. Read More