The World to Come
Befitting the moodiness of the presentation is a similarly idiosyncratic score courtesy of musician and visual artist Daniel Blumberg, who makes his feature-film composing debut. An alumnus of London's free-jazz and experimental venue Cafe Oto, Blumberg leverages his love for improvisation and atmosphere into a fragile soundtrack that's foreboding and romantic in equal measure. Clarinets and strings fill the foggy New York air and the loaded silences between Abigail and Tallie, aided capably by musicians like saxophonist Peter Brötzmann and vocalist Josephine Foster. Continue Reading →
Ich bin dein Mensch
Watch afterEverything Everywhere All at Once (2022),
Dan Stevens stars as a seductive but malfunctioning robot companion in Maria Schrader's refreshing, tender exploration of longing.
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Berlin Film Festival.)
It’s nearly impossible to not think of Spike Jonze’s romantic drama Her while watching Unorthodox creator Maria Schrader’s third feature I’m Your Man. Granted, both movies focus on a relationship between a lonely, messy human being and an AI. But where Jonze’s film tells the story from the male gaze, Schrader flips the narrative and gives the room to a complicated female character. The result is not only refreshing but also more tender and meditative, exploring love, loneliness, and longing over the technological ethics that tend to occupy these kinds of films. Continue Reading →
The United States vs. Billie Holiday
SimilarFreedom Writers (2007), La Vie en Rose (2007), Raging Bull (1980), The Pursuit of Happyness (2006),
An icon of the 20th-century jazz scene, Billie Holiday was an icon of Black culture, haunted by abuse and addiction. Her song “Strange Fruit”, based on a poem that describes a lynching, propelled her to fame – but also got the attention of the federal government, taking dramatic steps to stop her from singing the song in an effort to racialize the War on Drugs. In The United States vs. Billie Holiday, Lee Daniels tracks Holiday as the Federal Department of Narcotics begins to pursue her toward that end, in a film that ends up being a waste of potential. Continue Reading →
On the Count of Three
SimilarBrazil (1985), Italian for Beginners (2000), Mars Attacks! (1996), Talk to Her (2002),
Jerrod Carmichael's grim bromance straddles a delicate balance of tones between comedy and dark thriller, buoyed by a couple of strong performances.
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.)
On the Count of Three, the directorial debut from comedian Jerrod Carmichael, walks a tonal tightrope. It’s obvious from the first five minutes that this tightrope exists, and from the first 15 minutes, that it’s not always walked to perfection. Following lifelong, struggling best friends who agree on an end-of-day suicide pact, On the Count of Three combines Carmichael with the recent indie explosion that is Christopher Abbott. Playing Val and Kevin, the two characters spend their final day rewriting old wrongs, revisiting old foes, and seeing if they still can hop on a BMX bike and not shatter their ankles. Continue Reading →
In the Earth
Ben Wheatley's pandemic-shot sci-fi effort is a derivative and predictable trip through the fog despite a few choice moments.
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.)
A few months ago, Ben Wheatley did what seems to be en vogue as of late: make a movie mid-pandemic. It was over 15 days in August 2020 when Wheatley shot his latest from his own script, and does this one tick a few of the usual boxes. Lethal virus outbreak? Check. Lethal virus that isn’t actually COVID-19 but clearly is? Check. A non-COVID-19 lethal virus that feels extraneous overall? Yep, and yet its predictability goes beyond that. In the Earth sees Wheatley aping Andrei Tarkovsky by taking liberally from Stalker, but it also sees him aping himself by rehashing A Field in England much more predictably.
It’s pretty clear stuff throughout. While the cities rage with illness, Dr. Martin Lowery (Joel Fry) heads on a mission to a test site deep in the forest. After getting to a lodge closer to civilization, he makes the acquaintance of Alma (Ellora Torchia). Alma is a park ranger tasked to guide him, and right after an anonymous figure attacks them, they come across a nature dweller named Zach (Reece Shearsmith). For whatever reason, they think he’s an all right guy to trust, but I forgot to mention that no one in this movie has even the most basic intuition, especially given their professions. Continue Reading →
The Empty Man
StarringRobert Aramayo,
Studio20th Century Fox,
Two-hours and sixteen minutes. There is a version of The Empty Man that’s a solid, efficient horror flick, and then there’s the version that’s two-hours and sixteen minutes. Unfortunately, we got the latter. Adapted from an independent comic book of the same name, this poorly paced, occasionally engaging exercise staggers along like its titular demon. If only there was a way to stop it, before it’s too late. Continue Reading →
Ammonite
It's not the first time the two have worked together, having met to build the score for 2016's Lion and working on several projects since. Together, they've built a clear sense of collaboration which bears out in Ammonite's intimate, complicated scoring -- which echoes the growing intimacy between Winslet and Ronan as, respectively, 19th-century paleontologist Mary Anning and a young woman she's tasked to care for. Continue Reading →
Wander Darkly
Adrienne (Sienna Miller) and Matteo (Diego Luna) are miserable together, that much is immediately clear. They snipe at each other over the course of their date night, a substitute for therapy they can’t afford that of course Matteo has forgotten about. They have a new baby at home and a new mortgage and a lot of old, festering issues that all seem to be bubbling to a head when the unthinkable happens. A car careens into theirs, cutting their argument short, killing Adrienne. Probably. She thinks. She… isn’t exactly sure. Continue Reading →