Jane Schoenbrun’s second narrative feature is a gnawing search for belonging in the static spaces between analog pixels. They stir dreamlike logic into scavenged memories, especially in a scene early in the film that grasps at how the medium of television’s celestial radiance can grant wide-eyed salvation in even the darkest room. A young Owen […]
Jenna Marvin is a fearless 21-year-old queer artist in Russia. Using found objects, layers of makeup and tape, and a jaw-dropping amount of creativity, she manifests otherworldly outfits and strange creatures that seem to have fallen out of a sci-fi TV show and onto the streets of Moscow. Some of her outfits are fun and
Children take center stage but aren’t the real stars of “Ultraman: Rising,” a new animated superhero fantasy about absent parents, lost kids, and other Pixar-entrenched stock types. The movie follows (but predictably differs) from “Shin Ultraman,” the most recent high-profile project featuring the 58-year-old alien hero. “Shin Ultraman” was more of a retro-modern redo of
“Ghostlight,” which focuses on a construction worker drawn into a production of “Romeo and Juliet,” is a drama about traumatized people healing themselves with art. It’s messy in the way that life is messy. It’s one of those movies that simultaneously feels too long and not long enough. But there’s a purity and earnestness to
Valérie Donzelli’s “Just the Two of Us” is reminiscent of the “women’s pictures” of the 1930s and ’40s, films like “Stella Dallas,” “Possessed,” “Kitty Foyle,” and “Letter from an Unknown Woman”. These were melodramas, told from the woman’s point of view, dealing with often tragic circumstances: exploitation, having children out of wedlock, man/money problems, and
The Australian-born novelist and essayist Lily Brett is the daughter of Holocaust survivors and writes frequently on that topic and condition. Her 2001 novel Too Many Men is about a father and daughter who travel to Poland to explore the father’s tragic past. One of the book’s many features is a series of conversations the
When it premiered at Tribeca last year, David Duchovny’s “Reverse the Curse” was titled “Bucky F*cking Dent,” which is a title that would have at least given this remarkably lifeless film a bit of personality. It’s also the title of the book, also by Duchovny, on which this maudlin film is based. It’s a story
Instead of a feature-length movie, “The Grab,” a 106-minute documentary about shady land deals and global food insecurity, often resembles an overstuffed pilot for an over-ambitious new series. The movie’s creators start by making specific connections and anecdotes, mostly focusing on the sale and seizure of land in Zambia and other African countries. Then, they
In 1991, country superstar Garth Brooks crooned, “Well, it’s bulls and blood/It’s the dust and mud/It’s the roar of a Sunday crowd/It’s the white in the knuckles/The gold in the buckle/He’ll win the next go-’round.” The lyrics, about the ups and downs of a man who dedicates everything to the rodeo lifestyle, rattled around in
Julia Louis-Dreyfus gives a performance of breathtaking vulnerability as the mother of a dying teenager in “Tuesday,” a film that tells the story of the most shattering loss of all without melodrama or a score filled with syrupy strings. Writer/director Daina Oniunas-Pusic makes the characters’ pain real through the most improbable of metaphors. We have
