Ari Aster is a bold new voice in psychological horror, the kind that messes ruthlessly with your head. He proved that last year with Hereditary, featuring Toni Colette in one of cinema’s most memorable meltdowns. And now, with the hypnotic and haunting Midsommar, he ventures into fresh territory without losing …
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Abel Ferrara has come not to bury Pier Paolo Pasolini — writer, critic, activist, provocateur, communist, hedonist, out-and-proud homosexual and, last but not least, filmmaker — but to praise him. And, crucially, to commemorate the Italian director via a biopic that somehow doesn’t fall prey to the pitfalls that usually …
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It’s never entirely fair to judge a TV show based on the series you wish it were, rather than the one it actually is. You don’t want to be the one to argue, for instance, that Ballers would be much better if the Rock fought zombie Vikings every week. But …
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This all-access, dig-in-and-dig-deep documentary from Rachel Lears and co-writer Robin Blotnick concerns the 2018 primary campaigns of four progressive, grassroots, insurrectionist, female Democrats: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a waitress/bartender from New York who is forced to work double shifts to save her family home from foreclosure. Amy Vilela is a Nevada …
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This piece originally ran as part of SXSW 2019 coverage. Maybe you remember what happened to Matthew McConaughey back in 1999. The actor had graduated to Hollywood A-list status by this point; he’d also developed a deserved reputation for enjoying a good time off the set. So the cops get …
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If you’re unnerved by movies that exploit real-life tragedy for dramatic momentum (22 July, Patriots Day), Hotel Mumbai is not going to alleviate your concerns as terrorists armed with semi-automatics shoot down hotel guests in India like ducks in a barrel. That said, Aussie director Anthony Maras, in his feature …
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It’s a cliché in crime stories both true and fictional that neighbors and loved ones are blindsided to learn what the people close to them were truly capable of doing. But in the case of Dee Dee Blanchard and her daughter Gypsy Rose — the central figures of the first …
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It’s tempting to think we’ve seen it all when it comes to gangster movies — the Tommy-gunning tough guys, the cosa nostra capos and cutthroats, the tattooed yakuza hard men, the cartel-to-Chinese-triad thug lifers, the coked-out kingpins with their Everest-sized blow piles and ballistic “little friends.” Cristina Gallego and Ciro …
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Ray Burke (Andre Holland) talks a great game. If verbiage was a professional sport, the man would be rocking MVP rings, adorning Wheaties boxes, have his own sneaker line. Kids would be wearing his jersey. He’s first-round Hall-of-Famer material when it comes to pitching clients, charming “the naysayers and the …
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In the second episode of Showtime‘s new Eighties Wall Street dramedy Black Monday, the main characters are shadowed by a screenwriter who’s working on what will become Oliver Stone’s Wall Street. At one point, Regina Hall’s Dawn is in the midst of lecturing a colleague when she’s startled to notice …
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