In the opening minutes of The Kill Team, we see brief glimpses of optimism, national pride, and infantry brotherhood from our titular platoon of soldiers — all of which ends up shattered well before the ten-minute mark as the horrors of wartime and their effect on those involved make themselves abruptly known. Nat Wolff (“Home…
The San Francisco I knew as a young man was a place with a sense of community and culture that welcomed the adventurous, the imaginative, the creative, and the marginalized. Though, like every other major U.S. city, it was not always a place of harmony, and some neighborhoods had its dangers for outsiders, yet it…
On the surface Ari Aster’s Midsommar, is very similar to “Hereditary,” in that it too deals with a grieving protagonist who unwittingly finds herself slipping into the clutches of a murderous cult, but it deviates quite sharply from Aster’s debut feature in two interesting ways: One, it’s clearly a very dark comedy at times, not…
“From the ashes a fire shall be woken, a light from the shadows shall spring.” — J.R.R. Tolkien A chronicle of a relationship that is no longer nurturing, The Souvenir follows Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne, “I Am Love”), a young film student in London during the 1980s as she navigates to adulthood through a minefield…
“You think I am waiting to die . . . But I am waiting to be found” — Samantha Reynolds In a mission from which they have little chance of returning, a group of condemned prisoners elect to undertake a voyage to the deepest regions of outer space to attempt to harness the energy of…
Writer-director Peter Strickland’s strange and stimulating retail horror/comedy/romance In Fabric takes on a whole new meaning to making a startling fashion statement. Brilliantly bizarre, sardonically twisted and eerily suggestive, Strickland’s off-kilter, creepy confection to skewering consumerism, misplaced affections, and fetish-induced impulses makes for an ambitious, seedy sales pitch of weird sorts. His sense of warped…
Coming-of-age angst and self-discovery set against the Southern Californian skateboarding circuit are enthusiastically explored in the directorial debut of Oscar-nominated actor Jonah Hill in his observational and exuberant vehicle, Mid90s. As producer-writer-director and product of a 90’s West Coast teenage upbringing, Hill spins a heartfelt tale of growing pains balanced by skateboarding rebellion, a sense…
