Although The Terror frequently builds itself around the isolation of its characters, with wide shots of lithic tundras stretching as far as the eye can see, it’s so often about their connection too. Read More
When trying to sell someone on the merits of Under the Silver Lake, I tend to fall back on the same phrase: “It’s a movie that’s having a nervous breakdown.” Read More
In William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A., a quintessential Los Angeles crime thriller, artifice reigns, but so too does art. Read More
By transposing Raymond Carver’s stories to Los Angeles, Robert Altman's Short Cuts fashions a narrative that is less about the Los Angeles of our collective imagination and more about the real LA most of us don’t care to know. Read More
Well before Christian Grey donned his dumb ripped jeans, James Spader embodied the paradigmatic combination of vulnerability and composure; his appeal, from Crash to Secretary, requires our conviction that he would, and would like to, and could, punish us—only gently. Read More
Breathless is at once a ferociously horny and formally audacious remake of Godard’s hyper-referential film, as well as an all-or-nothing, frenetically American and self-aware meditation on desperately empty people lost in the thrall of the pop culture that gives form to their wants and needs. Read More
In Room 140, director Priscilla González Sainz supports her subjects with an unobtrusive and subtly compassionate eye, creating a vital work of art and an essential activist document. Read More
We can’t all agree to keep the planet inhabitable, yet somehow we all agree about Dwayne Johnson. He’s a universal, human, humanist thirst trap—irresistible because he trades in things we can all agree on. Read More
By reframing fandom as tried and true romance, showing characters committing under the best and worst circumstances, Bull Durham raises different stakes than both traditional sports movies and traditional romantic comedies. Read More
In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, a carnal energy roils and simmers in the air, like the thunderstorms rolling in over the plantation, drenching everyone to the bone. Read More
Let us thirst again, we beg. It’s one of the few things we have left. Read More
On the surface, Last Action Hero seems to be an action-buddy comedy with a gimmick—enjoyable for its humor, action set pieces, and clever metafictional gags—but at bottom it is a trenchant critique of action movies, the model of exaggerated masculinity they promote, and the real-life violence they both reflect and project. Read More