Travis Knight’s film is keen to get audiences to laugh at it instead of with it.
David Mckenzie seems less concerned with the film’s central mystery than he is with taking his characters’ clothes off.
It panders to its modern audience with the kind of look-Ma visual brouhaha that the Tobe Hoopers of the world couldn’t be bothered with.
Without Val Kilmer’s epileptic performance, Wonderland would be little more than a particularly unappealing late-night freak show.
The film’s awful sound design is trumped only by a shrill Vasanthis Chaturani’s sadistic desire to add vocal contractions to every line delivery.
There’s nothing kinky about Jan Jakub Kolski’s Pornography.
Crimson Gold is more cyclical, socially conscious cinema from the world of Jafar Panahi and Abbas Kiarostami.
The film organizes its space within a nodal web of slightly claustrophobic locations, always shrouded in fog or cigarette smoke.
Mystic River is a somber evocation of a poor, close-knit section of Boston on the brink of moral collapse.
A Thousand Months is a stark but lovely evocation of the many melodramas that simultaneously haunt and enliven a Moroccan village.
Conrad Veidt’s terrifying grin masks the horror of having one’s looks be objectified at the expense of their humanity.
It remains one of the most life-affirming works of art ever produced for the cinema.
Rithy Panh’s more abstract observations serve to distance us critically from the horrors committed at S21.
The Lion King is loaded with hoary bibilical references (rays of light, burning bushes) and Shakespearean shout-outs, but that’s all they are.
Dogville is less anti-American than it is, quite simply, anti-oppression.
The Sea’s breathtaking establishing shots are enough to make each passing crisis-ridden scene more trying than the last.
For those responsible for the joyous School of Rock, we salute you.
As usual, this year’s New York Film Festival slate features numerous recyclables from Cannes and Toronto.
As a vehicle for Dwayne Johnson’s wrestler alter ego, the essential action drive of the film is pure cotton candy.
The film works hard to make the audience part of its con and not a victim of it.
After last year’s delectable Merci Pour Le Chocolat, The Flower of Evil must count as a disappointment.