Despite having already premiered in New York earlier this year in a smattering of local cinemas, the screening of Dante Lam’s latest film, the Chinese mega-blockbuster Operation Red Sea, was one of the most hotly anticipated events of this year’s…
What Happened to the New York Asian Film Festival’s Main Slate? — A Bewildered Retrospective
What happened to this year’s New York Asian Film Festival main competition slate? For the last 17 years, the NYAFF has prided itself on being one of the most unusual, unpredictable, and daring festivals not just in New York but…
Ant-Man and the Wasp Movie Review:A Pleasing, Low-Stakes Palette Cleanser for the Marvel Cinematic Universe
Light Spoilers Ahead What’s a franchise to do after raising the stakes as high as conceivably possible? For those keeping score, the last film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Russo’s Avengers: Infinity War, saw the combined efforts of the…
Movie Review: The Catcher Was a Spy
The key to watching and enjoying Ben Lewin’s The Catcher Was a Spy—a dramatization of Nicholas Dawidoff’s non-fiction biography of the same name on Moe Berg, Jewish polymath, major league baseball player, and undercover World War Two O.S.S. agent—is realizing…
211 is a Heist Film By a Director Who Can’t Direct Action and Actors Who Won’t Act
The press notes for York Alec Shackleton’s 211 claim the film was inspired by the Battle of North Hollywood, a real-life shootout between two heavily armed bank robbers and the Los Angeles Police Department the morning of February 28, 1997.…
Film Canon : The Heroic Ones [1970]
There are many Revisionist Westerns and there are many Revisionist chanbara, but there are very few, if any, Revisionist wuxia. While Western and Japanese filmmakers have freely interrogated their national heroic ideals of the cowboy and the samurai, grappling with…
