Film
The Wackness is Dopeness
By Makenna GoodmanWinner of the audience award at Sundance this year, The Wackness is a story of two outcasts: one a middle-aged therapist/weird old guy who can’t connect with his wife and misses the good old days, the other a lonely high schooler who deals pot, crushes on girls out of his league, and loves hip-hop.
Languid Winds and Daring Kimonos
By David WilentzJapan Cuts’ debut last year announced the triumphant return of Japanese films to the international cinema map.
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Tatsuya Nakadai Retrospective
By David WilentzTatsuya Nakadai’s face is no doubt more familiar than his name. For years he was the third force in the samurai triumvirate led by Toshiro Mifune and director Akira Kurosawa.
The Ennobling Embittering Struggle
By David N. MeyerThe Human Condition: No Greater Love (1959) The Road to Eternity (1959) A Soldier’s Prayer (1961)
(Native) American Neo-Realism
By David N. MeyerFrom 1958–61, director Kent Mackenzie filmed a community of Southwestern Native Americans—who are never identified by tribe—living a hardscrabble life in the Bunker Hill tenements of down and out Los Angeles.
Smother Love
By Tessa DeCarloAnyone seeking a powerful argument for hiking the estate tax need look no further than Savage Grace, Tom Kalin’s exploration of life among the trustafarians.
Cyd Charisse: 1921-2008
By Sarahjane BlumThe final discovery of the Arthur Freed MGM Musical Factory, Cyd Charisse forestalled the end of an era with her hypnotic, sinuous, acrobatically improbable routines.
Real and Imagined Kurdistan
By Camila de OnísThis month’s Bahman Ghobadi retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art features seven of his short and feature films, all concerning his enduring subject: the daily lives and struggles of Kurdish people living in a region that exists for the most part in the imagination.
Sci-fi thriller? Slasher movie? Comedy? No, its M. Night Shyamalan’s latest flop…
By Mary HanlonI’ve never been too keen on M. Night Shyamalan’s work but next to The Happening, Signs seems Oscar worthy. Signs was (if you hadn’t heard) very bad, and in a nutshell The Happening is God-awful.
In Conversation
Harmony Korine in Conversation with Amy Taubin
Harmony Korine, best known for his screenplay Kids in 1995 (written in a matter of weeks when he was twenty-two) and the experimental provocation of Gummo from 1997, and Julian Donkey-Boy in 1999, has made his third feature Mister Lonely over the course of ten years.
