Cassavetes’ harsh skewering of middle-age, middle-class male anxiety plays like a cover song that hits the right notes, but never sounds quite right. Perhaps it’s the color cinematography, which is slick but made to look cheap withContinue reading

Bigelow’s first film in seven years is a visceral, heart-pounding experience, easily the best film yet made about the current war in Iraq and also one of the best war films of the past decade.Continue reading

Kenner’s disturbing and important documentary is like an episode of Unwrapped, that late-night Food Network staple that takes us “behind the scenes” of how our favorite foods are produced, recast as a horror movie. TheContinue reading

Gielen’s independently produced feature debut fits quite neatly into the animal comedy genre—what with its focus on teenagers singled-mindedly pursuing sex, booze, and mayhem—yet at the same time it doesn’t quite fit because Gielen hasContinue reading

There is a wonderful irony that the simple, first-person title summarizes the entirety of the film’s plot, yet it also refuses (purposefully, I would imagine) to capture its densely woven thematic depths and dramatic intricacies.Continue reading

I couldn’t help it. As soon as I learned of the existence of this grade-Z late ’80s action epic shot entirely in and around Waco, I had to track down a copy and see itContinue reading

It probably owes too great a debt to Wes Anderson’s increasingly oppressive quirkiness, but Johnson’s sophomore effort is still a gem of auspicious confidence and genre-twisting cleverness. Not everything works quite as well as itContinue reading

Based on one of only two novels written by Flannery O’Connor in her short lifetime, Huston’s baffling tragicomedy of contradictions about an angry young man who starts his own “Church Without Christ” maintains the darklyContinue reading

It’s a shame no one is going to see this intriguing and frequently exciting, though not exactly flawless, experiment in using 3-D computer-generated animation for serious-minded entertainment. In pitting the human race against a peacefulContinue reading

Cassavetes’s brutally honest portrait of a husband and wife falling apart at the seams and then seeking meaning in the arms of others is as tough as they come. Independently financed and produced (check theContinue reading