Steely Dan is the key. Not just the “crackling tube sound” that Bob Ferguson, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, says his friend is trying to achieve, but the way in which Paul Thomas Anderson works the band’s 1972 song “Dirty Work” into his masterpiece, One Battle After Another, our winner for …
Time and again, Jafar Panahi’s films accomplish the extraordinary: you will feel enriched and changed, thanks to the deep reserves of humanism in his movies since his delicate 1995 debut, The White Balloon. If you engage with his later filmography, starting with 2011’s unclassifiable This Is Not a Film — …
Rose Byrne gets the mother of all roles as Linda in Mary Bronstein’s electrifying, emotional force field of a movie, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. While Byrne has built a career on deft comedic timing (whether in Spy or Bridesmaids) as well as nail-shredding dramatic chops (see TV’s …
If Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent shares some cinematic DNA with the political thrillers of the 1970s — works like Alan J. Pakula’s The Parallax View or Sydney Pollack’s Three Days of the Condor, about ordinary citizens caught up in complex webs of institutional corruption and state violence — …
In a cinema culture that both worships and exploits female youth, few monsters engender more fear than the inconveniently visible older woman. From What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? through The Substance, nothing scares the patriarchy like ladies of a certain age who refuse to fade away. But even among …
There are supporting performances and there are load-bearing ones, turns so essential to a movie’s existence that without them the whole structure might crumble to the ground. At first glance, Benicio del Toro’s Sergio St. Carlos might seem a mere sidekick, the buddy who gets One Battle After Another’s Bob …
The movie is called Marty Supreme, but it could be called MARTY SUPREME!!! Josh Safdie’s latest is a 149-minute tornado of explosions, exaggerations, ejaculations, and extremity. Its climactic, everything-on-the-line ping pong battle dazzles with daring strikes and breathtaking returns — no doubt a physical manifestation of how Safdie and longtime …
Great Hollywood films are like symphonies: their intimate grace notes take on greater significance against grand orchestral backdrops. It’s fitting, then, that a cinematographer like Autumn Durald Arkapaw, who excels at composing images for music videos, is the eye and steady hand behind Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, the year’s most polyphonic …
We’re accustomed to international films fraught with political resonance, but it’s rare to see one with the exhilarating mix of political themes, deep emotions, thrilling suspense and moments of wit that writer and director Kleber Mendonça Filho brings to The Secret Agent. There’s a kind of cinematic alchemy in the …
On a field of bygone dreams, two recreational baseball teams enter for what will be their last game before construction crews take over the diamond to make way for tomorrow. Carson Lund’s feature debut Eephus is a baseball movie that’s about more than just the great American pastime. In addition …
As a dad of two girls under the age of 10, I say this from experience: Most kids movies stink. I am sometimes astounded by the junk that captures my daughters’ imagination. (Please don’t tell them I said this, they’ll yell at me.) But I am always happy to rewatch …
“When will these dark times pass? How much longer do we have to endure this?” These anguished questions, asked by one of the journalists featured in Julia Loktev’s five-and-a-half-hour My Undesirable Friends: Part I—Last Air in Moscow, have yet to be answered. Loktev shot the film using her phone, and …
Believe it or not, there was a time when Astoria, Queens was not the epicenter of all that is vibrant and progressive in New York City. It was a place to go for spanakopita and cheap rent. But if you moved there and wanted to entice your Manhattan-centric pals to …
When I used to edit listings, I learned that everybody needs them and nobody wants to do them, because the compilation and checking of details are thankless labors. That’s just one of many reasons why Screen Slate (screenslate.com) deserves thanks and honors. Not only does the site’s staff assiduously gather …
