We were all heavily anticipating Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman—his long, VFX-heavy and Netflix-funded adaptation of Charles Brandt’s nonfiction narrative book, I Heard You Paint Houses. The book and film examine the life of Frank Sheenan, a mafia hitman who claims to have killed Jimmy Hoffa—the labor union leader to whom he was exceptionally close both […]

Charlize Theron is a straight-laced Secretary of State in preparation to run for the U.S. presidency. She meets Seth Rogen at a party and soon remembers him as the cute little boy next door she used to babysit when she was a teenager. He’s now an (unemployed) extreme left-wing journalist, and she shortly thereafter hires […]

While recently reviewing Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, I was struck with the realization that I am no longer able to separate my love and knowledge of the filmmaker’s career from my opinion of his most recent films. It is very important to note before reviewing his new ten-episode, thirteen-hour Amazon Prime series […]

“Film festivals shouldn’t be about what celebrities are comin’ or what film is gonna get sold. It should be about people gettin’ together and watchin’ movies. And about people who can never get their movies seen havin’ a chance to have it watched… If only once. A good film festival should be something where you […]

Terry Gilliam has lost years of his life and large portions of his already questionable sanity to bring The Man Who Killed Don Quixote to the screen. The 2002 documentary Lost in La Mancha detailed his first attempt at producing the film in 2000 before it fell apart for one excruciating reason after another. The […]

Under the Silver Lake is the kind of film that warrants repeat viewings. While making complete sense of this challenging film may never happen, seeing it more than once can, at least, help clarify what the hell it actually is. Writer/director David Robert Mitchell’s follow-up to It Follows is a completely unexpected U-turn in his […]

You’ve probably heard that Serenity has an insane plot twist, but that doesn’t even begin to cover it. For the film’s first half, audiences are led to believe that it is a modern-day tropical noir thriller along the lines of Body Heat. As it unravels, however, it morphs into a complete mind-meddle that would have […]

The Beach Bum Harmony Korine’s follow-up to 2013’s Spring Breakers is another liquidly non-linear ode to hedonism. Though this film doesn’t exhibit the same biting satire, artistic aggression, or weighted, ethereal beauty as his previous masterwork, it’s still one of the most original and audacious films to make it to mainstream theaters in recent years. […]

Co-composer/writer/director S. Craig Zahler’s third film is the latest addition to his recent winning streak—one that seemed to come out of nowhere in 2015 with the horror western Bone Tomahawk and continued in 2017 with the prison thriller Brawl in Cell Block 99. Slow burning, character driven, and emotionally brutal with shocking bursts of supreme […]

Robert Rodriguez has had some great and successful creative partnerships throughout his career: Quentin Tarantino on Grindhouse and From Dusk Till Dawn, Frank Miller on Sin City, Ethan Maniquison on Machete. It seemed to be a sure thing that his latest team-up with James Cameron would be just as saliva inducing and worthy of a […]