Todd Haynes draws from the songs, lives (real and imagined) and mysteries of Bob Dylan for his impressionistic survey of the artist, his art, his interaction (and at times collision) with the culture he both grabs onto and flees, and the mysteries that surround him.
‘The Red Shoes’ meets ‘Repulsion’ in Darren Aronofsky’s ‘jittery psychological portrait of neurosis and obsession in the ballet world.
Steven Soderbergh directs Channing Tatum in a film inspired by his life as a male stripper.
John Huston’s final film is one of his most exquisite works, a perfect cinematic short story and a beautiful adaptation of James Joyce.
The third film from director Jeff Nichols is a story of childhood adventure steeped in the rural culture of life on the Mississippi and the mythology of Huckleberry Finn, but this boy’s adventure is also tangled in the world of adults and family bonds.
Alexander Payne’s road movie about best friends taking a bachelor party on the road through California vineyard country is a modern buddy film with a seventies sensibility.
Courtney Hunt delivers the best kind of American independent drama with Frozen River (2008), a film that is respectful of its characters, responsive to its location, and honest in its storytelling. This kind of uncompromising filmmaking is often a hard sell. Hunt not only got her film a theatrical release, she earned Academy Award nominations […]
The Artist (2011) is a valentine to silent movies. You’ve likely heard that before and it’s true, but it’s more than that. A modern movie in a classical mode, shot in glorious black and white without spoken dialogue (but filled with music and sound) and directed with a lively spirit of romance and adventure and […]
Reservoir Dogs (1992), Quentin Tarantino’s quotable blast of post-modern crime movie cool, is one of the most attention grabbing directorial debuts in history. Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, and Steve Buscemi—all dressed in identical black suits with thin ties and dark glasses—are gangsters who regroup in an empty warehouse in the aftermath of jewel […]
Dear White People (2014), the feature debut of director / writer Justin Simien, is a sharp, smart, ambitious satire of race, racism, privilege, prejudice, and power at an Ivy League college that has drawn comparisons to Spike Lee. It’s a fitting comparison. Simien uses humor and provocation to explore issues of race and race relationships […]
