Writer-director John Carpenter is synonymous with classic horror films like Halloween and The Thing and unconventional action movies like Big Trouble in Little China and Escape from New York. But perhaps no movie is more representative of his eclectic filmography than They Live.
Fourteen years after Borat, co-writer and star Sacha Baron Cohen donned the famous oversized gray suit and lush mustache again for its sequel. While the Borat Subsequent Moviefilm prides itself in revealing the same American ugliness as Borat, it does so without the original’s deft touch. Where Borat allowed Baron Cohen to amble from one improvised moment to the next, the Subsequent Moviefilm is overplotted, worrying more about the connective tissue than the substance.
Writer-director Karen Maine’s debut film conjures laughs, guilt, and nostalgia, particularly for young adults of a certain religious sect, or perhaps more accurately, former members of a religious sect. Yes, God, Yes is unusually sweet for a teen sex comedy, a feat accomplished through Maine’s perceptive script and Stranger Things star Natalie Dyer’s emotive performance. The semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story is refreshingly light fare in a somber year.
Peter Jackson and his army of cast and crew returned for a second trip to Middle-earth in 2002’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, based on author J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic of the same name. Centered around the breathtaking Battle of Helm’s Deep, a council of talking trees, and a band of hobbits on the perilous road to Mordor, the sequel surpasses the introductory Fellowship of the Ring. The Two Towers offers more swordplay, scares, and magic than its predecessor.
In response to the 2016 presidential election, a new documentary from A24 and Apple turns to America’s youth to explain how we got here and where we go next. Directors Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss followed 1,000 sweaty, hormonal teenage boys during the American Legion’s week-long civics camp to figure out if the kids are alright. Boys State is an uncomfortable glimpse at partisan politics tinged with an unnatural concentration on toxic masculinity in adolescence.
Starving artist and expat Charlie is in desperate need of 800 euros in writer-director Jordan Blady’s darkly comedic first feature. To the audience’s great amusement, Blady’s narcissistic protagonist is willing to go to extraordinary lengths to get ahead. The sonnet-length, 74-minute indie debuted at the LA Film Festival in 2018.
Artists can’t control the state of the world in which their art debuts; for film productions, circumstances are even dicier. Does the movie match or combat the prevailing societal mood? Will the economy support its release? Are the themes pertinent to a current issue? If the work isn’t discovered initially, will it stand the test of time for a future audience? The stars aligned to answer these questions for Palm Springs, a romantic comedy that dropped on Hulu in July 2020.
Backed by a cast of relative unknowns, director Ken Loach delivers a story true to those living on the margins. The filmmaker’s latest work is set in Newcastle, a city in Northeast England, but without the accents and references to soccer, it could just as easily be set in New Haven, a city in the American Northeast. Loach and writer Paul Laverty empathize with members of the shrinking middle class who are casualties of globalization and negligent labor laws.
Two children experience the inscrutable while trapped in a remote cabin with their stepmother-to-be. The Lodge doesn’t bend genre conventions or invent a wholly original horror premise, but the twisty, austere, and perturbing psychological horror movie is the genre’s finest release since Midsommar. The latest from Parasite distributor Neon is also a memorable American introduction for Austrian directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala.
The widely celebrated 2001 epic kicked off writer-director Peter Jackson’s landmark journey to Middle-earth. The Lord of the Rings series would influence decades of fantasy filmmaking on both the silver screen and the small screen. Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe all owe part of their size, rich lore, and (the newly coined) worldbuilding to Jackson’s trilogy, which introduced audiences to a complex world. Before The Fellowship of the Ring, intricate, episodic universes were reserved for lengthy novels and monthly comic books.
A Mixed Review 