Smug isn’t a good look for most comedians. Funny people may point out our foibles, but they’re best at capturing an Everyman sensibility while doing so. Confessional comedy kills, like most of the jokes Jim Gaffigan tells. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho Marathon Even when comics target their audiences there’s a wink-wink…
Brooklyn Mine is a former mine located in a remote area just north of Joshua Tree National Park. It takes some time to get to the Brooklyn mine. It is 17 miles away from the nearest paved road (Pinon Road in Joshua Tree). The dirt roads headed out are all washboard and will rattle more than your teeth….
The recent passing of the great Christopher Plummer brings to mind his incredible body of work, with his Oscar-nominated turn in “All the Money in the World” especially worth revisiting. While the 2017 movie received ample pre-release publicity for its wild production history (namely, how a disgraced Kevin Spacey was replaced by Plummer just a…
★★★ Stars Directed by: #CanUlkay Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonWritten by: #ErcanMehmetErdem Starring: #ÇagatayUlusoy, #EmirAliDogrul, #ErsinArici, #TurgayTanülkü, #SelenÖztürk Read moreRobert Stack Finally Solves a Mystery in ‘The Strange and Deadly Occurrence’Film Review by: Alicia Moore “Mehmet is a cherished fellow who runs the solid waste warehouse in the neighbourhood, he helps…
Thursday at SXSW was defined by stories about or by artists, outsiders, and dreamers. This came in a few different forms, including a pair of documentaries; one covering the life of a music pioneer and another about the surprising journey of an amateur dramatic group, and a work of animated art from filmmakers trying to…
“More often than not, a hero’s most epic battle is the one you never see; it’s the battle that goes on within him or herself.” Love him or hate him, Kevin Smith is a fascinating guy and iconic filmmaker. Love him or hate him, he has made 13 movies (so far), created a podcast empire,…
Like many young, aspiring writers, Rebecca Brill was obsessed with Sylvia Plath’s diaries. Their luminous, sensual, and often dramatic prose charts the ups and downs of Plath’s internal state with a serious attention that young women’s feelings rarely receive. So when the pandemic lockdown began in 2020, Brill, in the grip of a depression brought…
“Here is what tiger’s look like when they’re all alone in the jungle and nobody can see them.” If you need a good laugh, stop and take five minutes to watch this animated short. Curious World of Animals is a fun animated short “documentary” film made by animation filmmakers Dante Zaballa and Osian Efnisien. They…
In the late ‘80s, two TV broadcast hacks on Chicago stations created a bizarre mystery, in which the hackers—who displayed a masked guy based on Max Headroom, to go with their weird diatribe—were never found. It was so strong that it has inspired Midnighter title “Broadcast Signal Intrusion” from director Jacob Gentry, which imagines the same scenario as…
Elliott With 2 Ts has left the building and there is a new energy in the RuPaul’s Drag Race season 13 workroom. Utica turned it out in last week’s lip sync and as she erases Elliott’s lipstick message from the mirror, she is whooping and smiling, saying that she feels empowered by her performance: “I feel like…
From the very first shot of Keep an Eye Out, one is aware that what one is about to watch will be, in a word, quirky. For one, the film’s oddball opening credits sequence feels straight out of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, with a man clad in only a red brief conducting an orchestra out…
In the American South, many people have fond memories of a pot of collard greens simmering on the stove for hours, seasoned with a ham hock and stirred by a parent or grandparent. Cousins to cauliflower and broccoli, collards are a hearty green known for their robust, slightly bitter taste and the rich, nutritious “pot…
Of all the filmmakers who have accomplished a great many things in their career, Kevin Smith is not very high on the list of those who need their own career retrospective. Namely because his life story has become a part of his brand, with podcasts and self-reflective movies, specials that share insider stories, etc. But…
★★★ Directed by: #EytanFox Written by: #EtyanFox, #ItaySegal Starring: #JohnBenjaminHickey, #NivNissim Film Review by: Alex Matraxia Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonEytan Fox’s feature Sublet takes us into the lonely lives of two gay men, generations apart. Currently screening in the BFI Flare Film Festival, Sublet is a mature and relevant film…
The hospital at the University of Porto has operated for more than 200 years. After the recent addition of a modern medical facility, part of the hospital has been turned into a museum celebrating and exploring the history of health and medicine in Portugal. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonIts earliest iteration…
Phil Sheerin’s The Winter Lake is an agrestic thriller that is appealingly small-scale and exceedingly grim. Taking place in isolation, the characters aimlessly wander their external grounds and internal plight, only to find themselves confronting an unspeakable truth that’ll cause many of them to turn to violence. Elaine (Charlie Murphy) and her son Tom (Anson…
The small town of Yoshimi, Saitama, is known mostly for the Hundred Caves, the largest grave cluster in Japan. A few minutes away from the caves, however, lies another strange cave that was once just as popular. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonGankutsu Hotel (“cave hotel”) is a strange structure dug out…
Rocks in space collide with things—Earth included—all the time, but in human history these collisions have mostly been small events that make little lasting impact. Go back long enough, and massive impacts start to appear in the geological record. And the solar system’s youth was downright barbaric: momentous impacts left, right, and center. While the…
Food is never simple. Take what is known as a cookie in America and a biscuit in the United Kingdom—two small, usually sweet treat concepts that sometimes overlap and sometimes don’t. However humble, these foods are inextricably tied to gigantic ideas in the history of both countries: the expansion of empire, the Industrial Revolution, waves…
Deep in the Big Thicket of East Texas, a former railroad spur affords visitors a glimpse of the bobbing, shimmering Light of Saratoga, which seems to approach, bounce, and change color before disappearing. It’s one of several “ghost lights” or “spooklights,” lights that appear without an obvious source or explanation, often surrounded by a unique…
Director Brad Furman’s “City of Lies” begins with a violent altercation on an open road between two men. The clash becomes a central event that the story keeps returning to: exactly why two angry drivers egg each other on, chase one another down a busy street and then open fire in broad daylight is a…