We call that “the Vishnevetsky special”.

I wish box office worked this way.

Presumably because Child’s Play occupies the horror slot this week and Annabelle 3 is scheduled for the next.

I liked it as well and I think the nightmare logic might have worked better if the movie didn’t try to explain the tunnels at all. Lean into the irrationality, just present them without exposition, thus implicitly discouraging the audience from questioning them in practical terms. 

Like I said, artists and former double agents/intelligence officers that were or are genuinely threatening to those in power have proven to have a notable difference between them in how seriously they’re taken. (To be clear: obviously, the poisonings of Litvinenko and the Skripals, alongside all the other authorities-s…

1. Never disputed that.

There haven’t been any exiled or murdered actors. The Death of Stalin was not “immediately” banned, it was scheduled to have a wide theatrical release (which it had an official greenlight for in the form of a distribution certificate), with a promo campaign and everything, and was pulled just two days before release…

Actors making movies that no one will care about a month later anyway aren’t former double agents who intelligence services can carry years- or decades-long grudges against. They may well get criticized by some overzealous culture official(s) but most people, including in the government, wouldn’t give a shit, and actua…

“Exile” is pushing it (there has been no precedent for that), and even if meant as a joke the assassination suggestion is ridiculous. The situation here is far from ideal but it’s not totalitarian. Anti-corruption, anti-system, critical movies get made and widely released. There are government officials who have…

I had a lukewarm reaction to Roma, in a large part precisely due to it being “meticulously art-directed” (to the point where I found it almost airless), I’m much more down for something that feels spontaneous and lived-in so this is quite promising.

This may be my favorite Dowd review since The Space Between Us.

Filmmaker Magazine is good for intelligent film festival rundowns (they cover Cannes, as well as Sundance, Toronto and True/False). Reverse Shot reliably puts out high-quality criticism, both thoughtful and accessible, and their archives (going back 15+ years) are well worth digging into.

It is not a public matter before he’s called out publicly. And yes, you’re allowed to bring it up again, the question is, what the fuck do you intend to achieve with it? 

Well, only one of those two people is an actual critic.

I guess for brand-extending purposes they need to at least create an appearance of doing something fresh. 

Chandler looked so much like a 10-year-older Di Caprio in Game Night I’m half-convinced the movie intentionally leaned into that. Especially since he was playing a comically arrogant Wall Street hustler.

Even if I didn’t think Knight of Cups was a masterpiece, which I do - hell, even if I thought all of his recent films were failures - I don’t think I could agree. I’m all for letting directors of Malick’s stature experiment with the medium like he has, no matter the result, especially when the subject matter is so…

When it’s too much it becomes numbing, making the drama less effective. The movie may reflect reality to whatever degree it does but at the end of the day it’s still a fictional story written by one person, with him making choices as to how it unfolds, what to show and not to show, and if at some point you get too…

It’s not my favorite but I’ll take this opportunity to give a shout-out to his often derided Don John in Much Ado About Nothing, who I think is hilarious. Keanu is stiff, yes, but his stiffness is perfectly matched to the one-dimensionality of the character, who literally does almost nothing except ride into the…

Then he should have made a documentary or written a damn article. “But it’s like real life” is not an excuse for bad storytelling.