THE DISASTER ARTIST (Dir. by James Franco, 104 minutes, 2017, USA) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC The best in “So Bad It’s Good” cinema usually has one thing in common. Invariably, the auteur at the helm — everyone from Ed Wood to Michael Bay — sincerely believed they were making the best film possible. You can’t fake that kind of sincere ineptitude and those that have tried usually fall short of the mark, with the ensuing film choking on its irony. The Room (2003), the subject of The Disaster Artist, is one of those rare films that was born of […]
CONTEST: Win Tix To A VIP Advanced Screening Of Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape Of Water
Easily the strangest film this prestige season is Guillermo del Toro’s eccentric romantic masterpiece The Shape of Water. The film opens in Philadelphia at the Ritz Five Friday, December 14th and is a rather unique love story involving a mute woman named Elisa and a mysterious creature trapped in a top-secret government lab. Heavily influenced by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Delicatessen, City of Lost Children, Amélie), the film has del Toro returning to his roots to give us a darkly fantastic fairy tale that has Elisa falling in love with the monster who feels like a hybrid of Abe Sapien from […]
CINEMA: A Red Carpet Q&A W/ Director Dan Gilroy
BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC This year at the Philadelphia Film Festival I got a few moments to pick the brain of screenwriter/director Dan Gilroy on the red carpet, who’s quickly made a name for himself crafting engrossing narratives around unlikely protagonists. The follow up to his acclaimed directorial debut Nightcrawler is Roman J. Israel, Esq. a film starring Denzel Washington as a legal savant with what appears to be Asperger’s syndrome. Roman is forced to fend for himself after the death of his legal partner who was the face of their team, the people person — while Roman […]
CINEMA: Frontier Justice
BY CHRISTOPHER MALENEY FILM CRITIC If someone asks you to name the essential hallmarks of a Western, what would you say? The cowboy hat? The gunfight at high noon? The frontier town with running saloon fights and and anything-goes frontier feeling? The lone gunfighter on a quest for extrajudicial revenge against a villain too powerful for the law to contain? From Shane to Fargo, each retelling of the western — every reshuffle of the tropes — offers a different interpretation of the quest for justice in America, but all ultimately assure as that it can be found with the […]
BOOKS: Q&A With John Waters, Lord Of The Trash
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] BY JONATHAN VALANIA This conversation with celluloid-transgressor-turned-authority-on-all-things-wicked John Waters originally ran back in 2010 upon the publication of his book Role Models. We are re-running it today to mark the auspicious return of his beloved one-man Christmas show at Union Transfer on December 9th. DISCUSSED: LSD, outsider porn, fuzzy sweaters, uptight gay bars, Charlie Manson, Johnny Mathis, censorship, why the Chipmunks are far superior to the Beatles, and why he hasn’t made a film in years. *** PHAWKER: Before we get started, I want to enter this little fanboy anecdote into the record: My first real […]
CINEMA: Little Women
LADYBIRD (Directed by Greta Gerwig, 94 minutes, 2017, USA) BY CHRISTOPHER MALENEY FILM CRITIC Coming of age stories, or bildungsroman for those who know your literary terms, represent a foundational storytelling archetype of the western world. We love bildungsroman, from Greek myths and fairy tales through Harry Potter and the whole Young Adult canon, for a number of reasons. These stories allow older readers to re-live their formative years and experiences and younger readers to find characters and experiences that instruct them in their own life-choices. Most importantly, though, bildungsroman explore the central question of any society by asking […]
Q&A: Journey To The Center Of Mike Birbiglia
EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview originally published back in 2014. On the occasion of comedian Mike Birbiglia’s two night stand at Merriam Theater on Friday and Saturday, we present this encore edition. Enjoy. BY JONATHAN VALANIA Welcome to another round of Stupid Answers To Stupid Questions. Actually, that’s only half true. Comedian Mike Birbiglia, of Sleepwalk With Me fame, provided pretty smart answers to our stupid questions. DISCUSSED: Getting bladder cancer at 19; what he and Terry Gross talk about when they are not robbing banks; the strangest place he ever rubbed one out; whether the rumors are true that while […]
CINEMA: A Tale Of Two Cities
WONDERSTRUCK (Directed by Todd Haynes, 116 minutes, USA, 2017) BY CHRISTOPHER MALENEY FILM CRITIC Ah, New York City. The Big Apple. The City of Dreams. The ultimate actualization of the American Dream, the place you go when you have a dream of making it — where any kid can grow up to be a star. A home to probably eight hundred languages spread across more than eight million people. A city of strangers minding their own business. A city where you could live a parallel life to someone and never know it. There have been hundreds of movies, books, songs […]
CINEMA: The Deerhunter
THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER (2017, dir. by Yorgos Lanthimos, 121 min.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC The world of computer generated effects has allowed filmmakers a seemingly inexhaustible ability to to create the most audacious worlds imaginable. This week’s release of the latest Thor movie is an example of a colorful multi-hued universe conjured with a level of detail unimaginable in the days when Jack Kirby was first drawing such things in the pages of Marvel comics. Yet despite these tools, the CGI universes created for the big screen are disappointingly similar, showing visions of the future […]
CINEMA: Suffer The Children
THE GUARDIAN: When the documentary An Open Secret tried to lift the lid on child abuse in Hollywood, it billed itself as “the film Hollywood doesn’t want you to see”. The marketing tagline did not exaggerate. The film died upon release in 2015. There was no theatrical release to speak of, no television deal, no video-on-demand distribution. “We got zero Hollywood offers to distribute the film. Not even one. Literally no offers for any price whatsoever,” said Gabe Hoffman, a Florida-based hedge fund manager who financed the film. It did not seem to matter that it was directed by […]
CINEMA: White Flight, White Heat
SUBURBICON (Directed by George Clooney, 104 minutes, 2017, USA) BY CHRISTOPHER MALENEY FILM CRITIC Wouldn’t it be nice to go back to the simplicity and innocence of the 1950s? The postwar economy was booming: food was cheap, gas was cheap, and houses were cheap. The United States was on top of the world, justifying the excess of capitalism like never before. We were morally pure, with strong leaders, sanitized communities, and wholesome television. Kids played outside. Neighbors said hello to each other. Everyone had a job. Except, that’s not all true, is it? The fear of atomic annihilation pervaded the […]
BEING THERE: Bruce Almighty @ PFF
Photo by EVAN HUNDELT Last night Bruce Willis was in town to receive the Philadelphia Film Festival’s second annual Lumière Award, which is bestowed on “those that have demonstrated a passion for the furtherance of filmmaking as a vital artform and growing industry in Philadelphia,” according to the PFF web site. Willis has appeared in four movies shot in Philadelphia: Twelve Monkeys, The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Glass — the latter three directed by M. Nigh Shamylan, who presented the award to Willis. The two are currently shooting Glass, which is the final film in a superhero trilogy that began […]
CINEMA: The Tragic Kingdom
THE FLORIDA PROJECT ( Directed by Sean Baker, 115 minutes, U.S., 2017) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC With 2015 much-discussed indie hit Tangerine (forever remembered as “the film shot on an iPhone”) audiences began to catch up with New Jersey-born writer/director Sean Baker. Tangerine’s electrified storytelling, following a pair of audacious transgender streetwalkers as they hunt for one’s cheating boyfriend along the Hollywood strip, revealed Baker to be a director who could capture a rare naturalism that obscured his savvy plotting and instinct for drama that made his films transcend mere anthropological curiosity. Tangerine seemed to come out of nowhere […]