Well, that was upsetting. The new documentary, Blood on the Mountain, about the coal industry’s insidious and nefarious relationship with the people and land of West Virginia, is an investigation into the corporate and political cover-up of a history steeped in exploitation and suffering. It’s also an indictment of the communities willing to trade that…
From its opening shot of a house both sleek and warm to its transcendent finale, Arrival arrests attention with a grasp that is firm yet ephemeral. It is a sublime and profound experience, touching its audience on an emotional, intellectual and spiritual level, a film that declares both its originality and its ancestry. And what…
The devastating, sharp The Anatomy of Monsters is the kind of movie that lures one into thinking it’s yet another exploitative woman-in-peril movie only to pivot into a seedy, multilayered labyrinth. Aside from an ineffectual first ten minutes, the movie is a solid — if somewhat claustrophobic — thriller. The film begins with Andrew (Jesse…
Two bad decisions irrevocably alter the lives of two families when a pair of police officers pull over a suspicious vehicle on a forest road in Felix Ahrens’ taut, tense, terrific short Where the Woods End. What first seems simple shatters into several jagged pieces of moral complexity, all because the driver of the pulled-over…
To Leonard Cohen, Eliezer who went just before the big wave rose. A bulldozer wanders the streets, threatening buildings in ruins through a little Polish village that little knows about its decay. It circulates through the narrow streets silently, streets that remain unwitting to its presence. A mobile bridge appears, a ferry. A lone passenger…
Isaac Ezban’s The Similars (Los Parecidos) is an inventive, daring psychological thriller about eight people stranded in a remote bus depot during a never-ending thunderstorm. It’s relatively short (89 minutes) and exquisitely sweet with intensity and mystery that grow with each passing moment. It’s dark, it’s rainy, and poor Ulises (Gustavo Sánchez Parra, “Get the…
It’s hard to dissect a movie when you can’t even tell what it’s going for in the first place. Such is the case with My Dead Boyfriend, a bizarre dark comedy with a lot going on, but very little to say. As its only the second feature directed by prolific actor Anthony Edwards and based…
