The clichéd characters, self-conscious dialogue, and slapdash plotting reveal the film as the product of a zany high concept that was cynically gamed out in a screenwriting workshop.
Ryan Vu
Posted inFilm & Television
“Amulet” Is a Tedious Indie-Horror Flick Disguised as a Serious Film About Refugees
Without a minimal narrative backbone, all we’re left with is distraction and no meat.
Posted inFilm & Television
A Black Couple Kills a White Police Officer in Self-Defense and Goes Viral in “Queen & Slim”
Melina Matsoukas’s gorgeous-looking film is best when it goes all in on the fantasy aspects of its ‘70s exploitation-style premise, but a clunky script pulls it toward a by-the-numbers tragic arc.
Posted inFilm & Television
French Sex Comedy “Non-Fiction” Stirs Up Old Anxieties About New Media
This isn’t Olivier Assayas’s best, but fine actors such as Juliette Binoche make the most of a script cribbed from decade-old think pieces.
Posted inFilm & Television
Something Spiritual Simmers Beneath Satanism’s Media-Baiting Pranks
The documentary “Hail Satan?” is a funny, compelling look at the Satanic Temple’s political agendas, just-so characters, and deeper undercurrents.
Posted inFilm & Television
Full Frame: The Unsettled History of Lynchings Rustles in the Death of a North Carolina Teen
Always in Season explores the case of a seventeen-year-old African-American high school student who was found hanged from a swing set in Bladenboro.
Posted inFilm & Television
Full Frame: Fire as a Political Weapon in a Stellar Doc About the Burning of the South Bronx
Decade of Fire screens in Full Frame at 1:20 p.m. today.
Posted inFilm & Television
Full Frame: The Physical Barrier Between Ferguson, Missouri, and Kinloch Is Gone, but the Mental One Remains
In Jane Gillooly’s Where the Pavement Ends, the troubled relationship between the two cities serves as a microcosm of segregation’s long tail.
Posted inFilm & Television
Better Late Than Never, Burning—One of Last Year’s Best Films—Gets Two Local Screenings
The acclaimed South Korean film comes to The Ruby courtesy of Duke’s Screen/Society series.
Posted inFilm & Television
Life Is Good Outside of the Law in Shoplifters
The Japanese film that landed on many best-of-2018 lists finally makes it to the Triangle today.