Nate Parker‘s The Birth of a Nation is an urgent primal scream from American history’s darkest hour. Parker produces, writes, directs and stars in this much needed telling of the trials and tribulations of slave-turned-revolutionary Nat Turner. The relatively well-to-do preacher’s eyes are open to a new interpretation of the good book when his master...
An old flame forks her way back into the life of a married man in Joshua Marston‘s mysterious and somewhat satisfying Complete Unknown. Marston struck a chord with debut Maria Full of Grace, which played Sundance 12 years ago, giving a drug mule a face in performer Catalina Sandino Moreno. With Complete Unknown, the Californian...
After debuting on Saturday night, Manchester by the Sea quickly became the buzziest film at Sundance. When Amazon made an unprecedented $10 million dollar deal to sweep up distributing rights, the echo chamber only got louder. On the one hand, writer/director Kenneth Lonergan must welcome the fat paycheck with open arms. And yet, such a...
Werner Herzog‘s dulcet tones ripple from the screen, warming the audience with his distinctive Herzogian accent and lolling cadence. His latest topic of interest: the internet. As can be expected of the revered German filmmaker and documentarian, Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World is a thoughtful study of the past, present and future...
Rob Zombie‘s transition to the film world is, if nothing else, intriguing. After finding success uncharacteristic to the metal genre with band White Zombie, the metal rocker decided that basing album concepts off classic horror movies wasn’t cutting it. He wanted in on the game. By 1999, he had written an original script, The Crow:...
Yoga Hosers, the second feature in the proposed True North trilogy, refers to the fact that the two main characters, both named Collen, like yoga (or at least writer/director Kevin Smith‘s grossly ignorant appropriation of yoga) and are hosers (Canada’s way of saying fool or dolt.) Convenient store clerks and high school students, the Colleens...
Almost 7% of the American population has been diagnosed as suffering from depression. That’s roughly 15 million people today. In 1974, though depression was recognized as a serious mental disorder, it wasn’t regarded with the same weight that it is today. After all, the mental disease didn’t enter the DSM III until 1980. Christine, from...
With Captain Fantastic, writer/director Matt Ross has tapped enlightenment like a spigot into a maple tree and funneled it into crowd-pleasing dramedy. With a first-rate cast that includes Viggo Mortensen, Kathryn Hahn, Steve Zahn, Frank Langella and Ann Dowd, Ross’ second feature shows a filmmaker emerging with a booming voice, immediately confident enough to corral...
Hot from the critical heralding of Blue Ruin, Jeremy Saulnier returns to the world of white trash and movies with colors in their title with Green Room. An ultraviolet fantasy of viscus and vengeance, Green Room is as unapologetic as a Misfits album, as dead-serious as a KKK rally and as boastfully savage as a...
Goat harrowingly explores the hypocrisy of fraternal brotherhood, bearing witness to the ugly rights of passage that men must submit to into order to earn their badge of masculinity. In Andrew Neel‘s testosterone-fueled melodrama, ideas of modern masculinity are examined through the lens of the Phi Sigma Mu fraternity of the fictitious Brookman University as...