In Der Bunker, a young student heads to an isolated home to carry out research in solitude. When he arrives, however, he finds that the lake-view home is actually a bunker. That turns out to be the least weird turn of events in the film, a gleefully oddball drama-comedy that seems to crib from both…
A sensitive loner goes undercover to infiltrate a group of skinheads and finds he may have more in common with the white supremacists he’s investigating than his FBI colleagues. Or “Donnie Brasco” meets “The Believer.” Or “Point Break” meets “American History X.” Or “Reservoir Dogs” meets “Romper Stomper.” I couldn’t help but think of other…
Kings, true kings, are superior to nobody; everybody’s their equal. That’s what makes them different. That’s what makes them especial. Kings rule over no one. A king’s true realm is their self. Ben (Viggo Mortensen, “A Dangerous Method”) and Leslie (Trin Miller, “The Invoking”) sought for this kind of kings out of their kin: Plato’s…
Like an American sprinter against Usain Bolt, Seth Rogen’s Sausage Party starts off quickly (and humorously), but it fails to win the gold medal due to the actor/writer’s problem of not knowing when to reel in the bizarre comic situations (a trait perhaps caused by his close association with pal Adam Sandler) and not push…
Observance is a difficult film to figure out, the kind that makes you wonder not what its creators are intentionally hiding from its characters and viewers, but what they have not yet figured out themselves. While it has more than its fair share of beautiful shots, dramatic hard cuts, and impressive performances, how unclear the…
As the ragged and haggard anti-hero in Jean-François Richet’s rollicking grind-house showcase Blood Father, lead character John Link is a lost wrecking ball in search of raging redemption despite whatever erratic and intrinsic demons that beleaguered his unstable psyche. Well, this description can also be applied to the relentlessly problematic performer playing this graying, leather-skinned…
The plot’s familiar but the execution is fresh in this neo-western with a real country soul. Two stubble-muzzled brothers, armed with a pair of pistols and the Law at their heels, tear through the southern tip of America’s Great Plains on a small-town bank-robbing spree. The script, which won 2012’s Black List, was originally titled…
