4 Best Movies To Watch After Tenet (2020)

When Godfrey Reggio’s monumental experimental documentary Koyannistqatsi (Life Out of Balance in Hopi) first entered the zeitgeist, its radical nature as a postmodern film, with a thoroughly entrancing score by Phillip Glass, became intertwined with the rise of MTV and a new era of visual aesthetic being born within the music sphere. From the noise rock band Cows to electronic musicians Dr. Atmo and Oliver Leib to superstar pop singer Madonna, the film had an indelible effect on music and the music video.  Continue Reading →

After the aggressively negative critic and audience response to 1980’s Cruising, William Friedkin took a curious “hell with it, I’m going to do whatever I want” approach to projects. None of what he directed over the next decade, save for To Live and Die in L.A., came close to receiving the kind of acclaim his early 70s career did. If anything, it seemed as though he had given up his precise, occasionally unreasonable eye for perfection in favor of churning out the most generic cable-friendly nonsense possible.  Continue Reading →

Our first dispatch from the festival highlights an important milestone in women's sports history, and two tales of queer resilience. Ahh, the Toronto International Film Festival -- while we've got boots on the ground up in the chilly climes of Canada, those of us who can't swing the travel expenses are here, tackling the lesser-known releases that don't get the attention they deserve among the splashy awards campaigns and A-list stars. (Of course, there being an active strike makes that far easier, with these smaller works in even greater need of appraisal.) Opening the Docs program at TIFF for opening night was Copa 71, an intriguing if straight-across-the-pitch documentary about the first Women's World Cup -- but not the official one endorsed by FIFA in 1991, as professional women's footballers are shocked to learn in the opening minutes. The real one, it turns out, was in 1971, organized in Mexico City at their enormous Azteca Stadium. More than 100,000 attendees filled the stands, as teams from France, Mexico, the Netherlands, and more competed for the first-ever women's football tournament -- one of the biggest crowds such a tourney has ever seen. And it's been lost to history, until now. Continue Reading →

Nothing heals a broken marriage like the end of the world. That’s one of the takeaways from Greenland, a disaster movie about a massive comet that has Earth, and Gerard Butler, in its crosshairs. Butler plays John Garrity, a structural engineer who finds his marriage to Allison (Morena Baccarin) falling apart, just like the giant comet (named Clarke) that’s breaking up into smaller pieces so it can spread its damage all over the planet before its big chunk hits, creating a mass extinction event.  Continue Reading →