“Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change / Into something rich and strange” — William Shakespeare, “The Tempest” Film critic Roger Ebert once said, “All good art is about something deeper than it admits.” On the surface, Sofia Coppola’s (“The Beguiled”) On the Rocks is a light comedy about a…
The opening supertext of Wander draws attention to “indigenous, black, and people of color,” refers to “government violences,” and “change,” and highlights that the film was shot on the homelands of indigenous peoples. Released in 2020 shortly after the presidential election, it is tempting to see this film in the light of progressive change and…
Lance (Patrick Schwarzenegger, “Daniel Isn’t Real”), an unemployed college graduate travels to Chicago at the behest of a cousin and the promise of a job only to be drawn into a tight-knit cadre of millennials who express their frustrations at a broken system by robbing rich people. The viewpoint of these criminal masterminds is that…
The Democratic National Convention met in Chicago in August 1968 to choose their presidential candidate in a tumultuous year that saw the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the passage of the Civil Rights Act, Prague Spring, and growing protests in cities around the world against the escalation of the Vietnam War. Although…
Relic could be reductively described as “Hereditary” meets “Dark Water” with traces of “The Babadook.” The last reference might be due to this being a dour Australian horror involving an old-style house and maternal issues, but it’s a fine connection, nonetheless. While it also features small and sinister objects as well as strained family relationships,…
As a famous nanny once said, “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” And in the case of actor turned director Craig Roberts latest film, Eternal Beauty, there’s a lot of sweetness to help digest this painful tale. And with such acting talents as Sally Hawkins and David Thewlis starring within it, this…
Robin Wood’s “The Wicker Man” casts a giant, well, wicker man-shaped shadow over horror cinema, especially folk horror. From “Deliverance” to “Get Out,” from “The Blair Witch Project” to “Kill List,” the conceit of confident people from “mainstream” society going to a distant location and regretting it has yielded great results for horror filmmakers. Director…
