I enjoyed writer/director Alex Ross Perry’s Golden Exits well enough at first. Yet as my chronological distance from the project increases, so too do my annoyances with its gender power dynamics. The film follows six very specific Brooklynites whose lives are vaguely intertwined and then thrown into further disarray when a young, beautiful Australian disrupts…
There has not been a penetrating and provocative documentary in my recent memory that chronicles with such curiosity, the insight and intimacy into the musical process and romantic partnership disillusionment than Swedish director-writer-producer Kasper Collin’s compelling and resonating true crime documentary, I Called Him Morgan. Collin (“My Name Is Albert Ayler”) provides a winning, yet…
We have a story in my family. I was three years old and grappling with the crisis of identity and insane jealousy that accompanied the new baby sister in my orbit. It must have been October because a small pumpkin was within my small reach. I seized said pumpkin and hurled it at said little…
The Hasidic tradition that a child must be raised in a household where there is both a mother and a father is one of the cultural issues brought to the fore in Joshua Z Weinstein’s bittersweet film, Menashe. Co-written by Alex Lipschultz and Musa Syeed (“A Stray”) and set in the Hasidic community in the…
When spotlighting the dysfunctional familial factors in a period piece film set against the background of retro-urban rambunctiousness, it is a creative challenge to balance the ingredients involved: Underlying marital strife, sibling rivalry, adultery, emotional stagnation and fragile relations. In co-writer/director Gillian Robespierre’s nostalgic mid-nineties comedy, Landline, we are whisked back to a “vintage” time…
Confession time: I was a fan of “Gossip Girl” for longer than I like to admit. Though it was a guilty pleasure, the high-camp, high-class, histrionic exploits of wealthy young New Yorkers made for entertaining TV. That vision of New York City as a playground for the ultra-rich and ultra-beautiful is one shared by Xavier…
There are good musical biopics (“Love and Mercy,” “Walk the Line,” “La Bamba,” “Straight Outta Compton”) and there are bad ones (“Jolson Sings Again,” “The Doors,” “Great Balls of Fire!,” “Notorious”), and there are solid, but mediocre presentations like the latest, All Eyez On Me. Directed by Benny Boom (“Next Day Air”), All Eyez On…
