Category Archives: Movies

Review: Zombieland Double Tap

Posted on November 22, 2019 by

What made the first Zombieland more interesting than it had any right to be was its attention to dweebish detail, in partcilar its lists of dos and donts when navigating a new American landscape where the undead were a daily … Continue reading →

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Review: i: Documentary of the Journalist

Posted on November 15, 2019 by

Writer and documentary filmmaker Tatsuya Mori obviously likes titles limited to one letter of the alphabet. The two movies that made him famous, the ones about the Aum Shinrikyo cult, were titled A and A2. The title of his latest, … Continue reading →

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Media Mix, Nov. 10, 2019

Posted on November 10, 2019 by

Here’s this week’s Media Mix, which is about the “emperor taboo.” In the piece I refer to an article from 2018 that surveyed movies depicting or otherwise including the emperor in some capacity. Most of the titles mentioned in the … Continue reading →

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Review: The Trip to Spain

Posted on November 9, 2019 by

This third exploration of the semi-fictional competition-friendship between the two British comedic actors, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, tries to get by on the pure momentum generated by the last installment, The Trip to Italy, which was and will probably … Continue reading →

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Review: At Eternity’s Gate

Posted on November 8, 2019 by

It could be argued that we don’t need another biopic of Vincent Van Gogh, certainly the most cinematized painter of all time. And on the surface, Julian Schnabel’s treatment of the tormented Dutchman covers much of the same ground that … Continue reading →

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Review: An Elephant Sitting Still

Posted on November 4, 2019 by

Ironically or not, the national film culture that has best represented post-millennial capitalist malaise has been China’s. Many, including me, will credit or blame Jia Zhangke with this development, but it’s really a function of the Peoples’ Republic’s almost schizophrenic … Continue reading →

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Review: Climax

Posted on October 31, 2019 by

As the poster boy for post-millennial transgressive French cinema, Gaspar Noe has a reputation that precedes him by miles, and while his newest outrage does nothing to confound that estimation, its musical pedigree makes it somewhat less distasteful, at least … Continue reading →

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