Chuck Bowen

The filmmakers are interested in world building only as a pretext for maintaining a tone of non-contemplative ennui.

Robertson’s sense of having witnessed friends and collaborators get washed away by bitterness and addiction was more fulsomely evoked by The Last Waltz.

Outside of the Easy Money series, Kinnaman has rarely been allowed to utilize his tightly wound intensity this explicitly.

J.C. Chandor turns an intensely physical narrative into another of his inadvertently generic studies of procedure.

Sputnik’s third act is a rush of formulaic action meant, perhaps, to compensate for the interminably repetitive and impersonal second act, which is mostly concerned with reinforcing a set of foregone conclusions.

The opening credits immediately insist that director Paul Schrader isn’t interested in merely reprising your grandparents’ beloved version of Cat People, the 1942 horror film memorably directed by Jacques Tourneur and produced by Val Lewton. Set to the background of a profoundly bright brick red, which is soon revealed to be a desert jungle-scape, Giorgio Moroder’s primal synth score prepares us for an erotic blowout that overtly literalizes the Cat People conceit for the sake of a little soft porn fun.

What distinguishes the film from much of its ilk is Albert Shin’s ongoing taste for peculiar and unsettling details.

The filmmakers don’t examine the psychological terror, the bitterness, and lust that gave rise to many of the works they cherish.

Vice is as noisy as the media landscape that writer-director Adam McKay holds in contempt.

The sex in Nymphomaniac is inhuman, mechanical, boring, and predictably viewed through the (male) scrim of someone who characterizes women solely as withholders.

Lilting doesn't have any momentum or any sense of ambiguity, once the setup has been established.

Writer-director Shawn Linden skillfully draws us into the narrative before springing a series of startling traps—of both the narrative and literal variety.