Bill Watterson’s Dave Made a Maze is a film that leaves you grasping for points of comparison. How to describe it? A Murakami Merrie Melody? A Jim Henson film written by Philip K. Dick? Jorge Luis Borges presents Pee-wee’s Playhouse?…
Slamdance ’17 Movie Review: Hotel Coolgardie
To read more coverage of Slamdance 2017, go here. Pete Gleeson’s Hotel Coolgardie is a frequently nightmarish, occasionally heartbreaking documentary about Lina and Steph, two Finnish backpackers stranded in Australia who sign on as the resident barmaids in Coolgardie—a tiny…
Slamdance ’17 Movie Review: Withdrawn
To read more coverage of Slamdance 2017, go here. Never before have I seen a film that more closely captures the mindset, emotions, and speech patterns of millennials than Adrian Murray’s Withdrawn. Tall praise, but not undeserved. Working from a…
Slamdance ’17 Movie Review: Kuro
Joji Koyama and Tujiko Noriko’s Kuro isn’t just a movie; it’s a mystery, a mood, an intangible atmosphere of alien dread and ethereal beauty. You don’t just watch it; you give yourself over to it so it can infect your…
Movie Review: The Son of Joseph
If Robert Bresson had an obsession with hands as metaphors and symbols, then Eugène Green displays a similar preoccupation with feet in his new film The Son of Joseph. There are many static, ground level shots of feet walking into…
Concert Review: Yoshiki with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra – New York, N.Y., 1/12/17
It was almost the wrong venue. Before Yoshiki—classical pianist and co-founder of Visual Kei pioneers X Japan—took the stage at Carnegie Hall for his latest concert with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra as part of their international tour, a short film…
Movie Review: The Ardennes
When I finished Robin Pront’s The Ardennes, I knew I needed to sleep on it. I simply felt too many conflicting emotions. Did I like the film and its bizarre genre pastiches? Its intense Clint Eastwood/Coen Brothers color-grading that submerged…
