When one is in the mood to rent a movie, it’s not often one thinks, “I would love to watch a two hour Iranian slice-of-life film,” when what one normally […]

There’s a scene early on in Paul Thomas Anderson’s new movie The Master where Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), having inadvertently poisoned an old man with his dubious, self-distilled, paint-thinner-based moonshine, […]

Imagine making a movie set in high school today where one of your main characters is a 15 year old freshman girl who, in the first ten minutes, loses her […]

Americans love criminals. Something to do with the old west, or anyway the idea of the old west, of gunslingers roaming free across endless stretches of unexplored country, killing to […]

Compliance, opening today, is one of the most disturbing movies I’ve ever sat through. I’ve never felt more uncomfortably ill watching anything, and I’ve seen everything directed by Kevin Costner. […]

I saw a beautiful 35mm print of Citizen Kane at the Castro Theatre the other day, hadn’t seen it for many years, and while I realize saying this makes me […]

Oh, it’s on, people! Sight & Sound’s decennial list of the greatest 10 movies ever, as voted on by hordes of fancy-pants critics, has arrived, and Citizen Kane just got […]

Lying in bed this morning, pretending it wasn’t yet time to get up, I was thinking about the way hype and enthusiasm for films (and film franchises) has crossed a […]

There was a time when movie reviews meant something. That time is not now. Movie reviews today exist purely to voice an opinion such that it may be combined with […]

I’ve been thinking about backstory, thanks to the Evil One’s Spiderman post, in which he points out what should be to all sentient beings blindingly obvious, that no one on […]