Memory
SimilarAnnie Hall (1977), Ben-Hur (1959), Cape Fear (1991), Dawn of the Dead (2004), Donnie Brasco (1997), Enough (2002), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), From Russia with Love (1963), GoodFellas (1990), Hitman (2007), King Kong (2005), Léon: The Professional (1994), Lucky Number Slevin (2006), Manhattan (1979), Maria Full of Grace (2004), Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Pi (1998), Poseidon (2006),
Shaft (2000) Sliver (1993), Stranger Than Paradise (1984), Taxi Driver (1976), The Apartment (1960), The Departed (2006), The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), The Silent Partner (1978), The Terminal (2004), The Thirteenth Floor (1999), The Usual Suspects (1995), Twelve Monkeys (1995), War of the Worlds (2005), We Own the Night (2007), You Only Live Twice (1967),
Watch afterDoctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), Parasite (2019), Society of the Snow (2023), The Batman (2022), Top Gun: Maverick (2022),
StarringRay Stevenson,
Both the main characters in Michel Franco’s Memory are struggling to deal with the echoes of their past. Sylvia (Jessica Chastain), a recovering alcoholic and single mother to 13-year-old Anna (Brooke Timber), desperately wants to forget the unspoken traumas of her childhood. Saul (Peter Saarsgard), on the other hand, can’t grab a hold of his past. He’s powerless as early-onset dementia slowly but inevitably steals it from him. After their high school reunion, he wordlessly follows her home and spends the night standing outside her building. In turn, she visits him at the house he shares with his brother (Josh Charles) and niece (Elsie Fisher). Then she takes him for a walk and accuses him of participating in a rape that she endured at the age of 12, a crime that he has no memory of committing. Continue Reading →
The Outfit
SimilarDead Poets Society (1989), Lucky Number Slevin (2006), Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014), The Dark Knight (2008), The Good German (2006), The Interpreter (2005), West Side Story (2021),
StudioFilmNation Entertainment,
On a chilly December night, mobsters in 1920s Chicago have nowhere to go but a tailor’s workshop. Apologies; not a tailor. A cutter. This isn’t like any man you’ve met, not at least while looking for someone to fix your favorite suit. He’ll put together the suit you’ll wear at your office Christmas party, but he may also be the cleverest strategist on the block. And that tension is at the heart of The Outfit, a surprisingly taut, stagelike thriller with some great performances at its center. Continue Reading →
Firestarter
Similar2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Metropolis (1927),
Watch afterJurassic World Dominion (2022),
Did you leave the gas on? Or does this movie stink? I’ll be here all week, folks. Continue Reading →
Coming Home in the Dark
James Ashcroft's hostage horror is nought but bland, sour sadism.
Before the premiere screening of the New Zealand import Coming Home in the Dark, the festival programmer introducing it led off by admonishing viewers that the following film was “not for the faint of heart.” Of course, for a violent thriller appearing in the midnight slot at Sundance, such words are not so much a warning as they are a come-on designed to lure in those with more outre tastes hoping to find the next gory hit to emerge from the festival. Although the film is certainly gruesome enough, there is nothing here that average viewers will find to b that far beyond the pale. Instead, they are more likely to be put off by James Ashcroft’s hollow and increasingly tiresome exercise in empty sadism whose utter pointlessness is further underscored by its delusions that it is saying something profound.
Alan “Hoaggie” Hoaganraad (Erik Thomson) is a blandly pleasant-looking teacher who is off on a car trip with his wife, Jill (Mirama McDowell )and her teenaged sons Make (Billy Paratene) and Jordan (Frankie Paratene) to the coast. All seems perfectly normal until they, in the time-honored tradition of bad cinematic car trips, decide to stop for a hike and a picnic lunch. It is while completing the latter that they are approached by two men, the extremely loquacious Mandrake (Daniel Gilles) and the more taciturn Tubs (Mathias Luafutu). After a few minutes of vaguely menacing talk, Mandrake produces a rifle and the two interlopers are soon on the road with Alan and the family—at least what remains of it—as their captives. Continue Reading →
Zola
Janicza Bravo's retelling of the 2015 viral Twitter thread boasts great performances and surprisingly solid filmmaking, even if it ends on a shrug.
In 2015, 20-year-old stripper A’Ziah “Zola” Wells met a sex worker named Jessica. Both in Detroit at the time, the two bonded over their “shared hoeism” and established something of a rapport. They spent the night dancing together; they made some money. Fast-forward a couple of hours later and Jessica is inviting her to go dance in Miami, purportedly to make thousands of dollars in one night.
This, of course, wasn’t half of it. They got involved with pimps, some gang-bangers, murder, attempted suicide, and oodles of prostitution cash—at least according to Wells’ 148-tweet thread that went viral. She’s since gone on the record to say that she turned up some of the story to 11, but guess what? Now there’s a movie credited as “Based on the Tweets by A’Ziah ‘Zola’ King,” bringing you about what you’d expect and mostly for the better.
Granted, a lot of this has a lot to do with one's tolerance for ridiculousness. Those intrigued are likely to have fun. It's raunchy, crass, and stylized, and in the pantheon of stranger-than-fiction stories, this is one to stand out. But if you want a jaunt that signals good things to come from its newcomers and further cement the talents of those already established, this is that too. Zola is aptly aggro while also about something: about race, about class, about predation from the preyed upon. And yet, it runs wonderfully. Just make sure you’re ready for a few bumps. Continue Reading →