“Are you feeling this? are you feeling as good as I’m feeling right now?” – Connie Nikas (played by Robert Pattinson) We’re here for a good time, not a long time Running-on-ice at breakneck speed are a pair of expeditious society’s free agents in the frenzied form of Constantine “Connie” Nikas (Robert Pattinson) and […]
Pulling Focus
Pulling Focus: Okja (2017)
“We always have two perspectives when we look at animals. There is one perspective where we look at it in a friendly way or we treat it as family, and there’s one perspective where we treat it as food.” – Bong Joon-ho The call to mercy An affecting, earnest, and exciting tale of interspecies […]
Pulling Focus: Stand By Me (1986)
“You guys wanna see a dead body?” – Vern Tessio (played by Jerry O’Connell) When the night has come A contemplative and considerate rendering of susceptible youth as well as male identity, very little in Rob Reiner’s two previous films –– the hilarious and inspired mockumentary This is Spinal Tap (1984), and the silly […]
Pulling Focus: Bone Tomahawk (2015)
“A tense, absorbing pursuit Western that turns into a Grand Guignol gorefest, Bone Tomahawk is what you might get if you crossbred The Searchers with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, or maybe Cannibal Holocaust… There’s an elegance to Bone Tomahawk that doesn’t let up even when it veers into cult-movie territory.” – Bilge Ebiri, New […]
Pulling Focus: Wet Hot American Summer (2001)
“A delectable parody of dawn-of-the-Reagan-era teen flicks… a loving and meticulous recreation of the last moment before American youth culture went permanently ironic.” – Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly Season of the kitsch Director and co-writer David Wain’s Wet Hot American Summer is a film that’s charm, cheek, and capricious good nature, albeit dirty-minded, is […]
Pulling Focus: Crash (1996)
“Crash is a movie De Sade would have adored.” – J.G. Ballard Always crashing in the same car “Film for film,” writes film critic and historian J. Hoberman, “[David Cronenberg] is the most audacious and challenging director in the English-speaking world.” Certainly 1996’s brassy and grotesque fever dream Crash exemplifies such an idea and […]