OLD STONE (Lao shi) (2016, directed by Johnny Ma, 80 minutes, Canada/China) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC The advance word on the new thriller Old Stone, shot in the eastern Chinese city of Anhui by second generation Canadian director Johnny Ma, narrowcasts it as a damning indictment of contemporary Chinese society. In reality, this story of a man who turns desperate while battling the medical bureaucracy feels distressingly universal in its depiction of how governmental dehumanization rubs off on its citizenry. The film may be set in far-off China but U.S. audiences won’t have to squint too hard to […]

  THE NEW YORKER: Not that Kenneth Lonergan, who wrote and directed the movie, is deliberately making things hard for us to grasp. Rather, he proceeds on the assumption that things are hard, some irreparably so, and that it’s the job of a film not to smooth them over. That is why “Manchester by the Sea” becomes a litany of human error, with the tragic parts nicked and grazed by semi-comedy. We get minor misunderstandings, as when Joe’s best friend, the robust and reliable George (C. J. Wilson), has to shout to his wife across a crowded wake. We get […]

BILLY LYNN’S LONG HALFTIME WALK (2016, directed by Ang Lee, 110 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Ang Lee’s latest exemplifies the sort of intimate drama on a grand scale in which the director specializes. With Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, based on the best-selling novel by Ben Fountain, Lee again dazzles us with visceral, ambitious visuals, but the story at its heart seems just as simplistic as the empty patriotism against which the film rails. It is brilliantly constructed, a time capsule set in the early years of our 21st century war on Iraq, with the scene at […]

Gimmme Danger (2016, directed by Jim Jarmusch, 108 minutes, USA) BY JONATHAN VALANIA Loud, lewd and anarchic, the Stooges emerged from the dark side of the ’60s like a bad moon rising, and while they were largely misunderstood if not altogether despised back in the day, both their sound (the prototype of both punk and metal) and vision (hearts full of napalm, 10 soldiers and Nixon coming, apocalypse now) would prove prophetic as the Age of Aquarius curdled into the ’70s. James Newell Osterberg — AKA Iggy Pop, the titular frontman for Iggy & The Stooges — single-handedly invented the […]

  Moonlight (2016, directed by Barry Jenkins, 110 minutes, U.S.) The Handmaiden (2016, directed by Park Chan-wook, 144 minutes, South Korea) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC A couple years ago, I climbed aboard the critical pile-on for Richard Linklater’s ten-years-in-the-making epic, Boyhood, an intimate coming of age story that grew up alongside its young star. Watching a kid grew over a decade in a fictional film was an intriguing novelty and Linklater has a genial way with actors but through all the film’s pleasures was a gnawing thought that this kid’s life and experiences at their heart were not very […]

  DOCTOR STRANGE (2016, directed by Scott Derrickson, 115 minutes, USA) BY RICHARD SUPLEE By now everyone knows what to expect from a superhero film. We get one every other month and they all follow the same pattern: A man suffers some tragedy, acquires impossible abilities, finds an enemy with similar abilities he has to fight to protect the world, and he saves the world. A love interest and (at least in the case of the Marvel Cinematic Universe) tons of sarcasm are usually sprinkled throughout. There are some minor variations (the man might be a god or a whole […]

THE GUARDIAN: The movie itself may yet be a different proposition, but this first full-length trailer is clearly on a mission to rekindle the passions of those who adored the first Trainspotting. McGregor is still harping on about lifestyle choices, but this time it’s our reliance on social media and porn that’s getting his goat. The sonic stun-gun that is Underworld’s Born Slippy gets a run out, and there’s a sense that Boyle will be doing his level best to recapture the wired, kinetic intensity of the original, complete with phantasmagorical segues and those sudden, thrilling instances of extreme violence. […]

AMERICAN HONEY (2016, directed by Andrea Arnold, 163 minutes, U.K./U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Writer/director Andrea (Fish Tank) Arnold’s perspective is apparent from the first frame of her immersive youth epic American Honey. Being a British director shooting in the U.S. for the first time, you might imagine that Arnold’s instinct would be to use the widescreen frame to capture those endless horizons of the American Midwest. But no, Arnold uses an unusually boxy 1.37:1 aspect ratio to tell her story, a story of young characters enjoying a rambling freedom but not necessarily endless possibilities. The film laces us […]

BIRTH OF A NATION (2016, directed by Nate Parker, 120 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC I’m surprised how often I’ve heard critics and commentators sigh about, “another Hollywood film about slavery.” Has Hollywood really exhausted the subject? The 1975’s potboiler Mandingo, Spielberg’s overly-stately Amistad, Jonathan Demme’s mishandled adaptation of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Tarantino’s leering Django Unchained and Steve McQueen’s 2013 Academy Award-winner 12 Years a Slave; I’d say that is five major efforts over the last forty years. Like the Jewish Holocaust, the era is ripe with raw emotions and dramatic possibilities, but like the American genocide of […]