[This review contains some spoilers] One can scarcely imagine the pressure on Jordan Peele when the time came to begin shooting his sophomore feature film Us following the enormous success of his debu…
The Juniper Tree (4K) Movie Review: A Starkly Dream, Revivified
Among the pantheon of toe-chopping, head-slicing stepmothers in the Brothers Grimm’s fairy-tale canon, few are as starkly cruel and vicious as the one in The Juniper Tree. Here, an abusive stepm…
Furie (Hai Phuong) Movie Review: A Vietnamese bone-crunching visual delight
Hai Phuong hurts people for a living. A debt collector in rural Can Tho, she earns her keep beating up pig farmers and street grocers who missed their payments to loan sharks. When she fight…
The Film Canon: Hitchcock the Paranoiac Meets Highsmith the Misanthrope in Strangers on a Train (1951)
When Patricia Highsmith left the theater after seeing Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation of her debut novel Strangers on a Train, several thoughts flew through her mind, the only reportedly positive one be…
A Great Lamp, and the Salvation of Camaraderie Through Cinema
In early 2017, director Saad Qureshi called his friend Donald Monroe and confessed he was feeling suicidal. “Donald,” he pleaded, “if we don’t make a film right now, I’m going to kill myself.” Donald,…
Mega Time Squad is a Mega Time Waste
An action/comedy/fantasy whatsit, Tim van Dammen’s Mega Time Squad follows a gormless small-time gangster named John (Anton Tennet) in a podunk, no-horse New Zealand town of a few thousand people who …
Film Canon: Moi, Un Noir (1958)
“These young people are torn between tradition and mechanization, between Islam and alcohol. They are faithful to their beliefs, but idolize modern stars of boxing and cinema.” Feeling stifled by his …