Mild spoilers ahead for Raw and Saint Maud With weak plot lines, underdeveloped characters, and often cliché moralistic endings—such as the least-likely-to-survive character ending up as the final girl—slasher films serve one purpose: To disgust. Films like the cult classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and constant rehashings of Evil Dead[Read More…]
Tag: a24
‘Minari’ makes the personal feel universal
Minari, the latest offering from production company A24, presents a complicated yet touching portrait of a South Korean immigrant family through a holistic lens. The film follows the Yi family, who try to establish their lives on an Arkansas farm during the 1980s. The story, written and directed by Lee[Read More…]
The Killing of a Sacred Deer brings original formal approach to derivative subject matter
The Killing of a Sacred Deer opens with Schubert’s grandiose “Stabat Mater” playing over an extreme close-up of a human heart mid-operation, followed by a conversation between two surgeons about wristwatch straps. Within minutes, director Yorgos Lanthimos sets the tone for the film: Darkly eccentric, fearlessly macabre, and meticulously choreographed. However,[Read More…]
Lady Bird forgoes condescending tropes for character empowerment
Lady Bird is Greta Gerwig’s solo debut as writer and director, but the film is crafted so adeptly you’d think it was helmed by a filmmaker in her prime. Saoirse Ronan stars as Christine (Lady Bird) McPherson, a quirky senior at a Sacramento Catholic school in 2003 who identifies as living[Read More…]
‘The Florida Project’ finds grace in the kitschy margins of America’s Sunshine State
In his previous film, Tangerine (2015), director Sean Baker generated instant buzz by using an iPhone 5S to capture the intimate stories of transgender sex workers. It is a loud and frantic work, but through the grounded perspective of a phone camera, the under-represented voices on screen become undeniable. His[Read More…]
Pop Rhetoric: Selling horror
Three weekends into its theatre run, Andrés Muschietti’s It continued to lead the box-office with an impressive $29.8 million three-day total. Simultaneously, Darren Aronofsky’s mother! kept collecting dust with a meek $3.3 million in its second weekend despite strong TIFF word-of-mouth and Jennifer Lawrence’s star power. Both films are critically-acclaimed,[Read More…]
First Impressions: Safdie Brothers’ ‘Good Time’ not the best of times
Leo Stillinger: At the beginning of the Safdie brothers’ (Daddy Longlegs (2009), Heaven Knows What (2014)) new feature-length film Good Time, two brothers have just robbed a bank. One asks the other: “Are you feelin’ this?” Good Time is not a good movie, but perhaps it can be justified in[Read More…]
