What to make of the deeply strange Vox Lux? Actor turned writer/director Brady Corbet centers on the tragedy-strewn life of a female pop star to explore celebrity, sisterhood, motherhood, and terrorism. But while his sophomore effort is wildly ambitious, it’s more confounding than captivating, and ultimately underwhelming. [Read more…]
Clara’s Ghost Is A Twisted Family Affair
Reviewed by Kristy Puchko
There’s a unique kind of horror found within families. Inside jokes can become a cozy place to nestle insults. Old wounds and deepening resentments can be papered over with any new bit of family gossip or for any get together. But in the horror-comedy Clara’s Ghost, a brush with the potentially paranormal pushes a mild-mannered mom to lash out against the family that’s tradition is casually berating her. [Read more…]
Mary Queen of Scots is a Messy But Marvelous Bit Of Feminist Fan (Non)Fiction
A legendary beauty with a string of dead lovers and a dangerous claim to the English throne, Mary Stuart is a figure who has long fascinated historians. She has been painted as a murderer, a traitor, and a slut. But Mary Queen of Scots reconsiders this bad reputation and reconstructs her as a proto-feminist heroine who was condemned for her ambition, her beauty, and for trying to have it all. [Read more…]
Shoplifters Delivers A Defiantly Joyful Drama About An Unusual ‘Chosen Family’
“Chosen family” is a term most often associated with the LGBTQA+ community. It’s used to describe a close circle of friends who love each other like family, though there is no shared blood between them. Chosen families are how many queer people find community, comfort, and home after their biological relatives have offered them rejection, scorn, or outright ostracizing. Acclaimed Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda creates a unique and heart-warming tale of such a family with Shoplifters. [Read more…]
You’re Not Prepared For The Genre-Bending Romance In Border
You might think yourself a savvy cinephile. Perhaps you’ve heard that Border won Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival and is Sweden’s submission for Best Foreign-Language Film for the upcoming Academy Awards. So you hear the premise of a customs officer who forms an unexpected bond with a stranger she investigates, and assume you have a solid idea of the drama and romance that will unfurl. You’re wrong. Even if you know Border is adapted from a short story from Let The Right One In author and screenwriter John Ajvide Lindqvist, you can’t possibly conceive of the wild, disturbing yet beautiful story that’s lies within. And better yet, its unnerving surprises are just part of what makes this movie absolutely marvelous. [Read more…]
Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite Is Ferociously Funny And Delightfully Subversive
With The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, director Yorgos Lanthimos has chiseled out a reputation for crafting comedies out of the darkest corners of human experience. Loneliness, jealousy, betrayal and death are his pathways to startling hilarity. Thus, the laughs he earns burst forth as shocked guffaws and obscene barks, as if our joy in the face of such misery is a rude jolt to even ourselves. Admirers of Lanthimos’ twisted humor have new reason to revel. With his most captivating cast yet, he’s created The Favourite, a deranged look at sex and politics within the court of Queen Anne. [Read more…]
Nicole Kidman Slays In The Gritty Thriller Destroyer
There are secret shames we tuck away, bury deep into the darkest corners of our souls in hopes of forgetting them. But that shame doesn’t disintegrate. It festers. It poisons. It twists us into horrible things. That is the dark lesson lying within of Destroyer, a challenging crime-drama from director Karyn Kusama. [Read more…]
The Coen Brothers’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs Offers Whimsy But No Risks
With No Country For Old Men, Joel and Ethan Coen brought the Western into a brutal, modern territory. With their remake of True Grit, they dusted off an American classic and polished it with star power, a dash of whimsy, and a mean sheen of menace. Now, the Coen Brothers revel in their love of the genre with the ambitious anthology The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. As a big admirer of both their previous Westerns, I anticipated I’d be an easy mark for loving their latest. But while it’s stuffed with charming stars, colorful characters, and tales of life in the Wild West, this cowboy collection is clunky, indulgent, and ultimately underwhelming. [Read more…]
Agnieszka Smoczynska’s Daring and Brilliant Fugue
at Fantastic Fest, Austin
Review by Kristy PuchkoIn 2016, Polish director Agnieszka Smoczynska made a splash with her directorial debut The Lure, a heady horror-musical about man-eating mermaids. For her latest, Smoczynska has left behind the spectacle of blood, monsters, and burlesque numbers. But her biting brand of observational humor makes the daring drama Fugue a fitting and fantastic follow-up. [Read more…]
The Bawdy Colette Is Provocative And Fun
Her novels were a cultural sensation that sold out printing after printing, spurred sprawling merchandise and plays, and inspired a generation of young women to boldness. But Colette (formerly known as Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette) was long regarded the muse of the Claudine novels, while her husband Henry Gauthier-Villars was celebrated as their author. His nom-de-plume “Willy” graced the books’ covers and his bawdy brand was used to launch the novels he’d mentored her to ghostwrite. But it was her observations and insights into the sensational and sometimes salacious experience of being a young woman that made them a phenomenon. It would take years and great personal pain for Colette to get the credit she deserved. The rebellious and passionate biopic Colette celebrates the woman and the artist who poured her self onto the page, sharing her fire and brilliance with the ages. [Read more…]
Swaggering Portraits Of American Masculinity In The Sisters Brothers
The fantasy of the cowboy is one of liberty and power that is distinctly American. We imagine him riding high on a saddle, the Wild West his to explore and dominate. His hat makes for a striking silhouette as his hips swing with a masculine swagger. His gun outstretched to bend the wilderness and wickedness to his will. He is a folk hero, a good guy with a gun, a legend who refuses to play by the rules of a society he nonetheless defends selflessly. But not every guy with a gun is good. And not every cowboy is a hero. [Read more…]
Freaks Is A Sly Sci-Fi Alive With Surprise And Sentiment
Her shirt. It snagged my eye as strange, but I couldn’t immediately identify why. It doesn’t suit a seven-year-old somehow. Then I saw the snaps dangling just below her belly, and noticed the details on the shoulder. It’s a onesie, the kind that fastens snuggly around infants. At first, it’s a curious costuming choice. But as writers/directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein peel back the layers of their intimate and intense sci-fi thriller, the secrets spill out, and curious details transform into clues that reveal a world marvelous and monstrous. [Read more…]
Ferocity And Longing In The Chimerical Madeline’s Madeline
There are films that reject your cozy thirst to love them. Films that want not to comfort you, but to crawl under your skin and make it itch. They make you feel a deep, drowning unease. They submerge you in their story through sensation and leave you begging for release, for salvation. They leave your nerves raw and your mind rattled. Josephine Decker’s coming-of-age drama, Madeline’s Madeline, is such a film. [Read more…]
Tigers Are Not Afraid Is A Riveting Fantasy About A Real World Nightmare
When reality is too grim, fantasy can be a blessed escape. For the 11-year-old heroine at the heart of the modern fairy tale, Tigers Are Not Afraid, fantasy becomes her rocky path to salvation. It guides her through a Mexican city overrun by a merciless drug cartel that cages kids, pays off cops, and murders without consequence. When her mother goes missing, brave little Estrella (Paola Lara) goes on a quest to find her. Along the way, she’ll discover whispering phantoms, a tiny dragon, and a deep inner strength that might pull this spirited survivor through the most dangerous turns unscathed. [Read more…]
Musical Mayhem in LOUDER! Can’t Hear What You’re Singin,’ Wimp!
Imagine Marilyn Manson going on a madcap adventure with Carly Rae Jepson and the Three Stooges. That is the astonishing blend in the Japanese musical-comedy LOUDER! Can’t Hear What You’re Singin,’ Wimp!, which made its world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival. Vocal-chord scouring rock music collides with toe-tapping pop and gleefully silly slapstick to make a movie that’s wonderfully bonkers and totally unpredictable. [Read more…]
Lifechanger Is A Sophisticated And Richly-Disturbing Shapeshifter-Horror
at Fantasia International Film
Reviewed by Kristy Puchko
Making its world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival, Lifechanger is a lean, mean, and intense dose of shapeshifter horror with a chilling message perfectly suited to the complex conversations of the Me Too era. Written and directed by Canadian filmmaker Justin McConnell, Lifechanger follows a mysterious “skin-walker” who steals the form, memories, and lives of his victims, leaving behind a withered husk of a corpse. This creepy crime premise might have you expecting the movie would follow a cagey detective who is on this cruel creature’s trail. But McConnell offers something far more surprising, sophisticated, and richly disturbing. [Read more…]
Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade Is Exquisitely Excruciating
I was not prepared for Eighth Grade. Since its rave-rousing Sundance premiere, stand-up comedian turned writer/director Bo Burnham’s debut feature has been gaining buzz as a great coming-of-age tale. I knew my peers thought it was “so good,” and I assumed that meant captivating and fun with occasional streaks of agonizing secondhand embarrassment. Basically, I imagined Lady Bird Jr. But Eighth Grade is not a bittersweet romp. It is not fun. It’s less a movie, and more a cringe-inducing, full-body flashback to the exquisite excruciation of being an adolescent.
Leave No Trace Is A Ruthlessly Intimate Coming-Of-Age Drama
It’s in the clicks, a soft double-click sound made by the tongue of a thirteen-year-old girl. It’s a secret code to tell her father she’s near and she loves him. Leave No Trace is rich with details like this, which deftly paint its central father-daughter relationship without a word. It’s clear in their comfort, the way she falls into sync with his humming of a half-remembered tune. In their efficiency in building a fire, scavenging for wild mushrooms, and casually shooing away wild dogs, you learn this isn’t just a camping trip. This shelter of tarps and tents in the midst of a lush park in Portland, Oregon, is their home, humble but happy. However, once the authorities discover them, this simple bliss will be shattered, forcing the two to come to a brutal decision. [Read more…]
The Shocking Doc Three Identical Strangers Is Vexing Yet Undeniably Fascinating
Their spectacular story scored them a slew of newspaper headlines. Their charming chemistry made them coveted guests on the talk show circuit, the toast of New York’s nightclub scene, and quirky celebrity cameos in Desperately Seeking Susan who were handpicked by Madonna herself. They were three strapping young men, with broad smiles, meaty hands, curly hair, and the same damn face. Robert “Bobby” Shafran, David Kellman, and Eddy Galland were triplets separated at birth, adopted into three different families, and 19 years later reunited by chance. Their reunion was a warm and wonderful story that captured the public’s curiosity and hearts. But what happened next was dark and disturbing, and is revealed in the fascinating and frustrating documentary Three Identical Strangers. [Read more…]
Cheeky And Challenging, Damsel Won’t Play By The Rules
The Wild West is a place of fantasy long divorced from any truth that inspired its folklore. Movies have painted a gorgeous yet ferocious world of vast and vivid mesas and plains, inhabited by mysterious natives, dainty damsels in distress, black-hatted outlaws, and gruff but noble cowboys who ride high, like knights of this treacherous terrain. In our imagination, The West is a place ripe with opportunities to be a hero; the dangers are just part of that adventure. But in the sharply witty Western Damsel, buying into this fantasy means buying into deadly delusions of grandeur. Here, every man wants to think he’s the hero of this story, and every one is wrong. [Read more…]