The religious affiliation (religion) of Clark Kent, a.k.a., Superman, the archetypal costumed superhero. He was raised as a Protestant. The Sci-Fi Freak Site reviews TV science fiction shows. Club’s catch- up guide. Club. Once upon a time, dear reader, A. V. Club film editor A. A. Dowd and staff critic Ignatiy Vishnevetsky were just like you: thirsty, sweaty, forced to pay money out of their own pockets to see movies. Then, they got low- paying customer- service jobs that let them see all the movies they wanted for free. Sure, they eventually became film critics. But before that, one worked in a video store and the other in a movie theater. Club—to put together a guide to some of the best and most interesting movies released so far this year. Once upon a time, dear reader, A.V. Club film editor A.A. Dowd and staff critic Ignatiy Vishnevetsky were just like you: thirsty, sweaty, forced to pay money out of. North Carolina Legislators Vote To Pass Controversial HB2 Repeal Bill, And Neither Side's Happy. After two quick votes by the Rules Committee and the Senate, and a. All "preview sets and images" on this site are created for the purposes of "promoting" the actress portrayed and the original body of work, which is the copyright. The pivot in many plotlines is the Reveal. A character is revealed as another character's father, a god, or secret suitor or arch nemesis in disguise. More broadly. The Clueless Aesop trope as used in popular culture. A very serious Aesop is undermined because it's presented by a work that just cannot handle it well. So, what kind of movie do you feel like watching? Movies to make you cringe, even though you can’t look away. Weiner (Photo: Sundance Selects)Making people squirm isn’t great for business, which is why Hollywood tends to offer nothing but an endless buffet of comfort food. But some of the best cinema tests boundaries and gets under the skin; for some valuable discomfort, you have to look past the major studio movies. Corneliu Porumboiu, for example, specializes in a particularly minimalist strain of cringe comedy. The Romanian writer- director’s latest, The Treasure, scores bone- dry laughs from the sheer boredom of a backyard scavenger hunt, as a pair of middle- aged neighbors spend a whole day scanning a field for a buried fortune. It’s a film that treats tedium like the height of hilarity and the annoying beep of an unreliable metal detector like a running joke. Two more of the year’s prickliest comedies focus on embarrassing public spectacle, as clueless characters broadcast their total lack of self- awareness. In the French wincefest Marguerite, the character is a wealthy baroness buying her way into an opera career, despite a woeful lack of talent. Conceived as state- sanctioned propaganda, Under The Sun paints both an “official” image of modern North Korea and a less- flattering unofficial one, thanks to director Vitaly Mansky’s decision to keep the cameras running. Holy Hell, similarly, began life as a kind of propaganda: Its director was a loyal cult member who filmed 2. Meanwhile, Tickled unwraps an insidious conspiracy involving (wait for it) young men tickling each other, while Weiner gains full access to Anthony Weiner, his family, and his staff during a spectacularly unsuccessful mayoral campaign. In a year of truly mortifying political spectacle, seeing Huma Abedin dragged through the dirt on camera may take the cringe cake. A lot of the time, those variations are internal, as in Right Now, Wrong Then, which replays the same story—a visiting director meets a female fan while sightseeing, and they spend an evening out together—with key differences. Whit Stillman is a fellow traveler of the Rohmer school of witty, talky movies about people navigating relationships, though his own stated allegiance has always been to Jane Austen. Now, over a quarter- century since his hilarious (and Austen- referencing) debut, Metropolitan, the eccentric American independent has finally gotten around to adapting an Austen novel. Love & Friendship, based on the little- known Lady Susan, is as clever and seamless a marriage of source material and sensibility as one would expect, and gives Kate Beckinsale—a gifted comic actress who somehow ended up in a latex- fetish vampire franchise—the kind of role she too rarely gets. Why all these mentions of Rohmer? Perhaps because the French have something of a monopoly on making deft movies about phases of romance. In The Shadow Of Women, an unexpectedly funny relationship cautionary tale from the doomy and poetic Philippe Garrel, centers on a hypocritical documentary filmmaker who cheats on his wife, but can’t stand the thought of her with another man. Meanwhile, Arnaud Desplechin returns to the characters of My Sex Life. But what good would this guide be if it didn’t implore you, dear reader, to consider The Lobster, one of our absolute favorite modern comedies? The English- language debut of Greece’s Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth), this absurdist dystopian comedy offers up a near future in which all single people are required to find a partner within 4. From this surreal satirical premise (played straight by stars Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz, the former very effectively cast against type), The Lobster develops into something deceptively complex. And if you’re really adventurous—and interested in uniquely unconventional relationships—you might try Afternoon, Taiwanese master Tsai Ming- liang’s minimalist documentary about his creative partnership (and unrequited not- quite- romance) with his longtime leading man, Lee Kang- sheng. Even without Vin Diesel and his Fast & Furious crew around to say the word a couple dozen times, the movies of 2. The best of them haven’t just made familial themes a focus, but have developed their onscreen relatives well enough to make viewers feel like they’re part of the extended clan—or at least invited to the dysfunctional reunion. Few have crafted stronger drama out of family conflict than A Separation director Asghar Farhadi, who apparently developed his gift for plumbing the crevices of middle- class Iranian life as early as 2. Fireworks Wednesday, which took 1. American theaters, turns a heated husband- and- wife spat into a typically engrossing study of how marriages become subject to the influence and judgment of outsiders. It was joined in U. S. The film might make an interesting double feature with Jia Zhangke’s flawed but ambitious Mountains May Depart, which similarly investigates the relationship between the past and the present; spanning decades, countries, and aspect ratios, the film finds Jia again diagnosing the effects of globalism—this time on a wife, her husband, and her son. A couple of the year’s finest dramas used dazzling formal tricks to reveal the private emotional spaces of distressed relatives. Krisha, a strong directorial debut, creates an audio- visual language of social anxiety, boldly capturing the feelings of estrangement experienced by the title character (Krisha Fairchild) as she attempts to reconnect with the family she abandoned. No less stylistically, Joachim Trier’s Louder Than Bombs investigates the mourning period of a widower (Gabriel Byrne) and his two sons (Devin Druid and Jesse Eisenberg), visualizing their dreams, fantasies, memories, and desires. Sound emotionally exhausting? Chase these heavy family portraits with a loose, ecstatic vision of a surrogate one: Everybody Wants Some, in which Richard Linklater returns to the brotherhood of his college baseball days, emerging with another feature- length party, but also a sneaky study of adulthood coming on fast, like the effects of a giant bong hit. Part terse sci- fi chase thriller, part parenthood parable, this story of a former cult member (Michael Shannon) trying to protect his supernaturally gifted son never lets on more than it needs to, expressing itself in subtleties and nuances in a style that brings to mind classic films by Steven Spielberg and John Carpenter. Those that prefer their wonders to be visible rather than implied can check out the French animated film April And The Extraordinary World, an intricate vision of an alternate high- tech past, based on a story by French comics great Jacques Tardi. Those willing to get a little more esoteric should check out Kaili Blues, the poetic debut feature from Chinese filmmaker Bi Gan, in which flourishes of film noir (an ex- con, a missing boy who may have been sold, small- town gangs) are mirrored in the mundane and the mystical, recalling the films of the great Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Those who prefer their unclassifiable movies more homegrown should look to Anna Rose Holmer’s debut The Fits—“George Washington by way of George Romero,” in the words of our own Noel Murray. Terrence Malick, the top name in poetic reveries in American cinema, risks accusations of self- indulgence with the cryptic, ambiguously personal Knight Of Cups, which follows a Hollywood screenwriter (Christian Bale) as he runs his hand along walls, overhears improvised conversations by comedians, and romances more beautiful women than he can keep track of. Yet Malick’s repetitive navel- gazing is intoxicating, almost narcotic—as confessional and mystifying as an old diary. Why should the movies be any different? Reflecting the anxiety of the age, this year’s best thrillers have run a gamut of phobias, from the environmental terror of Norwegian disaster movie The Wave to the paranoia of ill intentions that informs Karyn Kusama’s supremely creepy slow burn The Invitation, about a seemingly friendly dinner party and the one guest who begins to suspect that things are not what they seem. The Wailing, from South Korean director Na Hong- jin (The Chaser), flavorfully mixes genres with its tale of a village torn asunder by both unholy forces and the crusades of zealots. Like The Exorcist, it’s a supernatural fright flick that provokes serious discussion. The Witch’s woodland farmhouse setting also counted as one of many backdrops of dread, pinning in the year’s unluckiest of movie heroes: the quiet, empty spaces of a Manhattan mansion, where the young caretaker of Mickey Keating’s Repulsion homage Darling comes violently unglued; the London haunted house of James Wan’s bigger, sillier The Conjuring 2, a spring- loaded funhouse ride of a movie; and the claustrophobic underground bunker of 1. Cloverfield Lane, which proved less a sequel to its blockbuster “cousin” than a feature- length Twilight Zone episode. But no space was smaller and more dangerous than the green room of Green Room, whose pressure- cooker scenario has provided 2. Anton Yelchin and the uncomfortable parallels between the film’s hatemongering villains and the real ones bellowing at rallies across the country. Do you just like your movies a pinch lysergic? Or with a hint of nightmare? If your answer to any of these questions was, “Yeah, obviously,” then there’s a pretty big chance that you’re a fan of the late Polish director Andrzej . Heroes (a Titles & Air Dates Guide). Ordinary people all over the globe discover that each possesses a strange super power that may be needed to save the world. We are just providing. We cannot vouch for the user experience. Any sales or other. All rights reserved.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
September 2017
Categories |