Bigelow takes what could be a standard cop drama with a Gen X edge (these bank robbers are SURFERS, DUDE!) and turns it on its head, zeroing in past the cliches and expected beats to create a sultry, desire-driven thriller.
Read More
Ti West and Mia Goth’s MaXXXine takes us to a lovely replication of ‘80s Los Angeles, but there’s not much substance behind the sets and star power.
Read More
A Quiet Place: Day One poses the question: What if you eschewed a family-driven survival story in favor of a plot with stakes no higher than that of a video game side quest?
Read More
Embracing global cinema has the ability to cross cultural and cinematic barriers: how the filmmaker uses action and visual storytelling as a universal language, how the filmmaker connects their personal story to broader themes, and how the filmmaker embraces the absurdity of the world around us. In Tsui Hark’s Wicked City (1992), we have one of global cinema’s finest and oddest examples.
Read More
This week in Austin screenings, 6/28-7/4.
Read More
Lanthimos loves a fall from grace and loves to see characters smart enough to make the right moves but dumb enough to think that the good days will last forever.
Read More
Jacques Tati’s Playtime (1967) remains a masterpiece of visual comedy reminding viewers of our own contemporary constructions that threaten to engulf us.
Read More
For director Shaun Seneviratne, life is cinema and cinema is life. His first feature film, Ben and Suzanne: A Reunion in Four Parts, which debuted at SXSW this year, places the viewer as a fly on the wall, witnesses to a week in the life of a couple’s attempt to figure out their future. It is the result of a fourteen-year-long filmmaking process.
Read More
With All That Jazz, Fosse not only created a pageant of his own death, but the glorious death of the original movie musical altogether.
Read More
This week in Austin screenings, 6/21-6/27.
Read More
Desert Hearts has become a touchstone for queer audiences across generations, a lesbian love story written and directed by women that gives space to the emotions and sexuality of two women’s relationship.
Read More
Movie musicals have been a persistent staple in American culture nearly as long as movies themselves have. Therefore, it is worth discussing ten movie musicals you may have seldom stopped to consider next to standards like Singin’ in the Rain or Cabaret or Grease. These unsung heroes of the movie musical genre are begging for more love and attention.
Read More
In director Chris Smith’s blitzy kitsch-soaked documentary, DEVO, Mothersbaugh and Casale give an oral history of the experimental music project’s suburban origins, their wacky audio-visual antics on the punk circuit, and their brief, but explosive time as one of the most famous bands in the world.
Read More
This week in Austin screenings 6/14-6/20.
Read More
What sets Mishima apart from Schrader’s other works is its unconventional structure and style.
Read More
Hit Man, the latest from Austin’s own director Richard Linklater and actor Glen Powell, looks like the opposite of film noir, particularly as described by Schrader, at first. It’is a funny, sexy, sunny character study, in which Powell and co-star Adria Arjona build a thorny romance that turns on curiosity as much as it does attraction. Powell’s mild-mannered philosophy professor Gary Johnson, who’s moonlightsing as an imposter hitman for the New Orleans Police Department, provides a chance for him to go both broad and deep. It’s consistently a hoot.
Read More
In all of cinema’s short history, has there ever been another joke as filthy, funny, perverse – and of course, well-earned – as the canonization of John Waters? At this exact moment, you can go out and spend forty hard-earned dollars on a “culturally important” boutique Blu-ray of a film which concludes on a cross-dresser eating literal, actual dog turds. If there's a more beautiful representation of the lurking good taste which occasionally threatens to puncture the bubble of our stolid society, I've yet to see it. But then again, Pink Flamingos was never about good taste.
Read More
A definitive ranking of every outfit Honey Kitsuragi wears in Hideakki Anno’s 2004 Cutie Honey adaptation.
Read More
This week in Austin screenings 6/7 - 6/13.
Read More
A promising but flawed directorial debut from Ishana Night Shyamalan, The Watchers dazzles with its visuals but lacks the pacing and subtle writing needed to elevate it into greatness.
Read More