NEW YORK MAGAZINE: The saddest thing about the second Guardians of the Galaxy movie, which carries the official title Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, is that it’s going to make a lot of people think they’re happy. “Hold on,” you say. “Think they’re happy? If they think they’re happy, then they are happy.” Which is often true, but not always. I think I’m happy eating a Quarter Pounder with Cheese and a large fries. But a few minutes later, when my salt/sugar/fat high has dissipated into self-disgust, I realize that what I’ve paid for is mainly bloat. The […]

RISK (2017, directed by Laura Poitras, 97 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC As Risk, the latest film from documentarian Laura Poitras, gets underway — with its darkened hotel rooms, glowing LED screens and Poitras’ distinctive, hushed, monotone narration — it quickly feels like we’re back for a sequel to her Academy Award winning profile of whistle-blower Edward Snowden, 2014’s Citizenfour. Nobody is calling Risk a sequel, yet in some ways it is that and more, a film in production both before and after Citizenfour that contains and builds on all of the earlier films themes. As the film […]

SPIN: In the ensemble-cast film, Iggy plays an angel-like figure who watches over a mysterious, grotesque circus–all lust, greed, and violence behind-the-scenes–situated on the banks of the North Sea. Think of a French art-film amalgam of Wings of Desire and Freaks (or Carnivale) and maybe you have a bit of the picture. Watch the new trailer below, and look for the on-demand/Blu-Ray release on May 9. MORE PREVIOUSLY: Review Of Jim Jarmusch’s Stooges Documentary PREVIOUSLY: Iggy Pop @ The Academy Of Music

Like the teasers for The Force Awakens, this doesn’t reveal much plot. Out of context battles between The First Order and The Resistance are shown but other than X-Wings, TIE Fighters and stormtroopers shooting each other, we know nothing. Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) tries to escape a Resistance base alongside his orange robot ball and Finn (John Boyega) is still asleep in some medical pod. Luke Skywalker’s (Mark Hamill) whispery Obi-Wan-esque voiceover as he trains Rey (Daisy Ridley) in the ways of the Force and presumably the Jedi is the bulk of the trailer. I say presumably because Luke says […]

  BY DILLON ALEXANDER The Anarchist Cookbook is that forbidden book your older brother and his friends ordered off the internet and used to make napalm in your old, crazy neighbor’s driveway that wound through the woods. Or maybe it’s the book that your posh friends prominently displayed on top of their coffee table for shock value. Maybe you heard about it on the news, when it was found at the apartment of some alienated, mentally unstable man who was convinced that he was the Joker from The Dark Knight. Maybe you have no clue what it is, but chances […]

  MARK HARRIS: What is striking about Being There, the portrait of a man who relates to no one but to whom everyone relates, is that it represents both a synthesis of many of the qualities in Ashby’s earlier movies and a sharp break from them. The film is initially quiet; its mood is hushed, almost austere. We meet Chance, a simpleminded, middle-aged man-child who has spent his entire life in the Washington, D.C., home of a wealthy, unseen benefactor, as he goes about what is clearly an unvarying ritual. He wakes up, gets out of bed, combs his hair, […]

NEW YORK TIMES: Bouncing his young daughter on his knee, or at work in his studio, Mr. Lynch is less cryptic in this film directed by Jon Nguyen, Rick Barnes and Olivia Neergaard-Holm than in the 2007 documentary “Lynch.” Mr. Lynch charts the shift from an idyllic early childhood in Idaho to a darker period after a family move to Virginia. He repeatedly credits the encouragement of the artist Bushnell Keeler and he calls Philadelphia, where he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, a city that would “suck your happiness away and fill you with sadness and fear.” […]

Directed by Luc Besson, based on the French sci-fi graphic novel, Valerian & Laureline. In theaters July 21st.

T2 Trainspotting (2017, directed by Danny Boyle, 117 minutes, U.K.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Trainspotting was a fun lark in 1996, so why not bring the boys back together 20 years later to catch up?  Drawing partially from Irvine Welsh’s literary sequel, Porno, director Danny Boyle takes the dare and ties off for another hit of drugs, banter, and hi-jinks.  Reuniting the 40-something Scots (Rent Boy, Sick Boy, Begbie, and Spud) the film wants to be a knowing look at middle-age but seems to be just as confused as its characters on the question of why is exists. Spud […]

  Logan (2017, directed by James Mangold, 137 minutes, USA) BY RICHARD SUPLEE It has been 17 years since the first X-Men movie introduced the world to Hugh Jackman’s razor-clawed Wolverine. Saying that Jackman’s solo Wolverine films “are a mixed bag” is probably too generous of a compliment. The first spin-off, 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, is a film only talked about in conversations about “the worst comic book movie ever.” The film is so toxic that it made Ryan Reynold’s Deadpool nearly impossible to make. It was just a bunch of fight scenes, random forgettable mutants, and CGI powers jumbled […]

  KEDI (2017, directed by Ceda Toron, 80 minutes, Turkey) BY JOANN LOVIGLIO CAT FILM CRITIC Kedi is the cat movie we need now: A master class in empathy, a reaffirmation of the human capacity for kindness, and CATS. Lots of cats — some we come to know by name, others we briefly meet in passing, all of them scruffily, scrappily adorable. Director/producer Ceyda Torun spent her childhood in Istanbul. Like many of the people we meet in Kedi, she says the city’s street cats made her life less lonely and shaped her into the person she is. It’s clear […]

I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO (2016, directed by Raoul Peck, 95 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC It looks like President Trump is going to follow the recent tradition and forgo a State of the Union speech as his first term begins, but with an eerie ambiance of resurrection, Raoul Peck has brought to life the fiery spirit of the late writer/intellectual James Baldwin to deliver the address. Hearing that Baldwin is at the center of the documentary, I Am Not Your Negro might lead you to expect your basic talking heads interviews about the man life and work. […]