Cryptozoo, Dash Shaw’s beautifully animated follow-up to 2016’s My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea, begins with a stark, colorless prologue in which a couple, Amber and Matthew (voiced by Luisa Krause and Michael Cera), scale a fence that seems to be randomly placed in the middle of the woods and find themselves staring at an honest-to-God unicorn. The ensuing scene is delicately handled, conveying both the beauty and fright of the encounter and, eventually, its tragicness unflinchingly, without sentimentality. It’s a wonderful introduction to the weird world of the film, where not only unicorns but also gorgons, griffins, […]

I’ve always had an affinity for tales of Roger Corman’s frugal resourcefulness. If the legendary filmmaker had a standing set and a “name” actor with a few surplus days left on a contract, you can bet Corman was going to expediently craft a movie to fit those puzzle pieces. Outside of a shared fondness for social commentary within genre, the films of Oscar nominated writer/director Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium)—with their cutting-edge special effects and ample budgets – don’t typically bear much resemblance to Corman’s drive-in heyday. However, Blomkamp’s latest effort, Demonic, was constructed with a similarly enterprising spirit. When […]

Ever since his directorial debut with The Indian Runner in 1991, Sean Penn has been intent on keeping a certain tradition of American cinema alive: the tradition of directorially self-effacing, behavior-driven movies for adults in which complicated men and women find themselves unable to get out of their own and each other’s way. It’s the school of filmmaking practiced by John Cassavetes, Hal Ashby and Bob Rafelson, on whose work Penn builds with movies that fuse character and landscape to get at something unique and complex about American identity and culture. His latest film, Flag Day, stands alongside The Indian […]

Ian Seabrook is an aquatic Zelig for film franchises. He crossed paths with Deadpool, RoboCop, Godzilla and the Blair Witch. He joined the Pirates of the Caribbean, X-Men and Mission: Impossible. He sat ringside for Freddy vs. Jason, Aliens vs. Predator and Batman v Superman.  So it’s understandable if he can’t quite recall which Hellraiser sequel served as his baptism as an underwater cameraman. “I think it was four or five, I don’t even know what number they’re up to at this point,” said Seabrook. What he does remember about that job is an enduring lesson of underwater photography—you may only get […]

When I saw The Lost Leonardo at the Tribeca Film Festival, I expected a documentary about art history, restoration techniques and how paintings are authenticated. I was vaguely aware of the film’s subject—the painting “Salvator Mundi,” a portrait of Jesus discovered in a New Orleans estate sale in April 2005 and later deemed a lost work by Leonardo da Vinci. What I was unaware of was the controversy over the painting’s authorship, its journey through the world of high finance and unfettered capitalism and how this made it an object of desire, a status symbol, for political actors like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed […]

Ema is Pablo Larraín’s eighth feature film but has the energy of a new beginning.  When I saw it at Sundance 2020, this boldly experimental narrative seemed like a new approach from the established director who had put Chilean fiction filmmaking on the international map in a new way with a rapid-fire series of films that included the Academy-nominated No (2012), Berlin Silver Bear winner The Club (2015) and Neruda (2016), as well as US projects Jackie (2016) and the recently released HBO series Lisey’s Story. A month after the festival, images from the film lingered in my mind, in […]

I first saw Hayley Garrigus’s feature nonfiction debut, You Can’t Kill Meme, in 2019 as a work-in-progress cut. As I wrote last year, Meme  is bookended by the unnerving image of an CG-animated Pepe the Frog cradled like a baby in a man’s arms before slowly turning his head. Meme branches out from 4Chan’s infamous r/pol board to interview subjects who include online meme warriors on the left and right, a self-described “lightworker” who hosts workshops at her home and R. Kirk Packwood, whose 2004 book, Memetic Magic: Manipulation of the Root Social Matrix and the Fabric of Reality, codified how memes might […]

Bluntly titled but mysterious all the same, John and the Hole marks the directorial debut of visual artist Pascual Sisto. Originally set to premiere at the 2020 Cannes Film Festival, the film finally premiered (albeit virtually) at Sundance this past January.  Played by lead actor Charlie Shotwell (Captain Fantastic), suburban pre-teen John appears content with his suburban life. He lives in a beautiful Massachusetts home with his parents (Michael C. Hall and Jennifer Ehle) and sister (Taissa Farmiga), surrounded by nature and endless open space, complete with an underground bunker (the hole of the film’s title) built in the yard […]

For Leos Carax, stories of love—or really, most any story—mean finding a new language of filmmaking. For Caroline Champetier, Carax’s longtime director of photography, that means realizing dreams that might not at first seem possible. Annette is the story of a dream yearned for but not fully realized, the great love between opera superstar Ann (Marion Cotillard) and ornery comedian Henry (Adam Driver). They have a child who becomes a singing star herself, but their bond is undone in the dark crucible of Henry’s discontent, and Carax and Champetier craft a kind of handmade journey whose very nature expresses the […]

When we first meet X (Santiago Segura) in an extended moving camera shot that follows him exiting a state penitentiary, the length of the sentence he’s just completed is signaled by the contents of the box of vintage tech and media he carries: an outdated computer monitor with the clear plastic revealing its circuit board; tech-nerd, unfashionable over-the-ear headphones; the Trainspotting soundtrack CD. He takes the bus home — a one-room apartment minimalist in all the wrong ways (no “apartment therapy” here), which The Five Rules of Success director Orson Oblowitz, acting as his own cinematographer, captures with a kind […]