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Just Mercy
Reproductive justice. Climate justice. Food justice. Social justice. Append the word “justice” to any other word and you’ve got a ready-made brand platform for niche activism. As cultural forces shape the meaning of words over time, they risk losing their specificity and sharpness. The word “justice” risks dissipating into a partisan nebula. Depending which side…
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I lost my body (J’ai perdu mon corps)
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Under the Shadow (زیر سایه)
The “haunted house” trope – an abandoned Victorian mansion sitting alone in the middle of a great estate or a crumbling castle on a rain-swept hillside – has been urbanized over the last thirty years. Our modern cities don’t have enough noise and technology to keep ghosts away. Candyman sets a vengeful spirit among Chicago‘s…
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Let The Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in)
Let the Right One In is a foreign, art-house, vampire film starring a bunch of weird-looking Swedish kids. But also it’s a haunting look at isolation, childhood trauma and intimacy somewhere in the hazy realm between friendship and first love. Stark and matter-of-fact about its subject matter (Swedish vampires), this minimalist film was good enough…
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A Dark Song
If occult magic had real power, what would it take to achieve it? If humanity could summon and control transcendent spirits, would the process be painless? Empowering? Academic? A Dark Song, an Irish independent film from first-time writer/director Liam Gavin, speculates quite the opposite. By turns intense, exhausting, brutal and horrifying, the filmic magic of…
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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
My Spider-Man was the 1981 “Spider-Friends” version, complete with invented sidekicks, incomprehensible Saturday morning subplots, shoddy animation, and a little dog too (spoiler: they were all killed off by a vampire in the 2014 Spider-Verse story arc because… comics). My brother had a Mego doll and Underoos when we were kids (I had the Hulk),…
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A Quiet Place
A young family faces the horrors of an unearthly enemy where even the smallest sound means a gruesome death. Actor/director John Krasinski (yes, it’s a bearded Jim from The Office) stars with Emily Blunt (Mary Poppins forthcoming) in a tight, intense thriller that’s equal parts monster movie and interpersonal drama. You don’t have to strain…
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Coco
Pixar’s latest is a masterpiece of animation and storytelling with it’s characteristic warmth and humor wrapped in a no-cliches, culturally-specific narrative. The story takes place in Mexico, features an all-Latino cast, fluidly switches between Spanish and English, and introduces cultural elements that will be unfamiliar to white audiences — often with no narrative explanation. In…
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A Ghost Story
A shimmer of light against a dark wall, a softly shutting door in an empty room, a sudden wakefulness and knocking in the night. Why do houses become haunted? What holds a ghost to a place? What memory, what seeking, what revelation will trigger release? Short on plot, long on mood and themes, David Lowery’s…
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Paterson
“Say it! No ideas but in things. Mr. Paterson has gone away to rest and write.” – William Carlos Williams, Paterson (1946-1958) Why is Adam Driver a leading man? He’s not Hollywood sexy, but he can act. In Paterson, from writer/director Jim Jarmusch, Driver plays Paterson (the man) living in Paterson, NJ (the town) in a…
