REVIEW: Knight of Cups [2016]

“You’re still the love of my life. Should I tell you that?” The evolution of Terrence Malick is a fascinating one. From regular narrative structure to voiceover-driven epics to visual poems, his style has been stripped down to beautiful imagery and pithily obtuse dialogue sending us on journeys as much about ourselves as they are about the characters onscreen. Many believed his last film To the Wonder was a sign of decline—hours of improvised footage cobbled together during post-production into something wholly different than how it began—but I still held…

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REVIEW: Darling [2016]

“Abyssus Abyssum Invocat” Much like with Stanley Kubrick‘s The Shining, the job of caretaker isn’t an easy one in Mickey Keating‘s Darling. It should be: combat any prospective upkeep problems, tidy up, wait until the tenure is complete, and collect your pay. But not this New York City brownstone with its history steeped in satanic ritual. The Madame of the house (Sean Young) knows more than she lets on, dropping juicy tidbits about young “Darling’s” (Lauren Ashley Carter) predecessor’s suicide and cryptic warnings about a locked room at the end…

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NoHoIFF16 REVIEW: Projections of America [2014]

“To introduce America to millions of people throughout the world” It doesn’t take long for optimism to change to naiveté—a lesson learned from watching Peter Miller‘s informative documentary Projections of America. The film focuses on a series of twenty-six shorts produced during World War II by Robert Riskin and the European branch of America’s Office of War Information. This “propaganda of truth” was meant to instill a sense of hope and freedom in those liberated from the Nazi’s Fascist regime. They didn’t show America’s military strength, but instead our humanity.…

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REVIEW: Heir [2015]

“Ain’t nothing like the real thing” It’s not difficult to parse what’s happening after watching Gordon (Robert Nolan) chat online about his son with an as yet unnamed partner. The verbiage is simple and direct: “my son” with photo and a “play date??? :)” in reply. His anxiety and fear is palpable, but he doesn’t stop. He’s ready to take a leap that leaves no room for turning back and his transformation into the monster necessary to do so has begun to take shape with his flesh opening wide. Gordon…

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REVIEW: Dirty Books [2016]

“Jobs? You’re an after school club.” Print is dead and apparently this isn’t only true in the outside world where magazines and newspapers are shuttering and/or moving to a more robust online presence. Of course schools would find themselves facing the same problem. After all, it’s the latest generations’ penchant for using the internet as a source of daily headlines that has more or less catalyzed the transition. So when cost saving measures become number one on the to-do list of middle school principals the nation over, shuttering a paper…

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REVIEW: A Walk Through H: The Reincarnation of an Ornithologist [1978]

“This drawing was probably the one I’d need first” What is “H”? It doesn’t stand for heron or owl keeper Van Hoyten. No, “H” is a place only decipherable when approaching its end—a journey spanning 1,418 miles traveled by following 92 distinct drawings that double as maps until such time comes when they fade into oblivion. More precisely they fade into a crossroads signpost or windmill silhouette, identical iconography left behind as a marker denoting we’ve finished one more step towards finding our destination. Whether or not that end point…

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REVIEW: Bizarre: A Circus Story [2016]

“You can’t do anything ‘half’ in the circus” It’s tough to remember that Cirque du Soleil isn’t “new” (1984?!) when you’re an American like me whose idea of the circus growing up was watching goofy clowns in ten-sizes-too-large costumes pile into a tiny car while animals roared and jumped through hoops. I think the main reason I enjoyed going was the fact I’d probably come home with something that glowed. Acrobatics were therefore a very tiny portion of my excitement and yet that’s pretty much the part requiring the most…

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REVIEW: Dear Phone [1976]

“Hirous claimed he could make ten calls for the price of a beer” During his avant-garde experimental phase—as if you wouldn’t call the two feature films I’ve seen from later on in his career avant-garde or experimental—Peter Greenaway took it upon himself to play a high-brow telephone game with his short film Dear Phone, an elegy to the since forgotten British red telephone box. The entire piece consists of static-framed shots of different booths across England along with random aural examples of the myriad rings cut between pages of text…

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REVIEW: The Age of Adaline [2015]

“Tell me something I can hold onto forever and never let go” A high concept fantasy property such as The Age of Adaline could easily fall into trouble if it decided to put its focus on the mystery rather than the characters. J. Mills Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz script deals with a woman who at twenty-nine was victim to an unexplained accident that left her unable to age. She wasn’t immortal or imperious to pain and injury; she simply would remain looking and being twenty-nine until something finally stopped her…

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REVIEW: Hot Pursuit [2015]

“He just wanted to sit in the front seat” Sometimes the most intriguing aspect of a film project is the “why” of its creation. This usually deals with the changing of hands or evolution of scripts as words on the page become spoken onscreen, but every once in awhile the fascination is more abstract. The “why” in these cases becomes a hypothetical question you don’t care to find an answer for because not knowing whether the reason will be acceptable or not is better than definitively knowing it won’t. So…

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