It positions The Shining as standing in for cinema, for history, for obsession, for postmodern theory buckling under the film’s heft.
Phil Spector’s nominal entertainment value proceeds almost entirely from its status as an explosive camp object.
A top-shelf presentation of one of last year’s baggiest, most unnecessary films.
Matías Piñeiro’s film isn’t so much deeply disrespecting notions of ownership, authorship, etc., as charitably redefining them.
Aesthetically, People’s Park continuous long take presents a gentle comment on cinema’s relationship to a people’s history.
The top-notch packaging reveals Argo for what it really is: a coolly realized, wildly reckless actioner.
A Good Day to Die Hard feels like it was reverse-engineered from its “Yippee Ki-Yay Mother Russia” tagline.
Kino offers a serviceable package for a serviceable early indie horror film.
Stolen proves a proficient “Cager” and suitable excuse for wasting half an afternoon.
Compliance effectively splits the difference between American indie art-house solemnity and direct-to-video bad-object tastelessness.
Parker’s not so much broad or inclusive as weirdly schizophrenic.
Wanting neither for rumination nor provocation, Hors Satan effectively splits the difference between Hadewijch and Bruno Dumont’s earlier films.
Essential viewing, if not only for its edutainment factor, but for the dynamism and felt resonance of its maker’s bounding enthusiasms.
The film arrives on home video in a package that makes good on its swelling rep as an American indie video nasty.
Zero Dark Thirty is nothing if not a forthright, above-board, cards-on-the-table kind of film.
Lately for Quentin Tarantino, it’s all about scar tissue.
Alps significantly improves (or at least expands) on the surrealist exercises of Dogtooth.
Angry Boys reveals a talented comedian not so much pushing the boundaries of good taste as half-assedly mucking about at their perimeter.
That John Hyams manages to overestimate the abilities of a Universal Soldier sequel proves undeniably appealing.
Certain historical movements have washed away at something of these films’ shared ideological heft.