source: Searchlight Pictures There are many ways to measure the greatest filmmakers. Highest high, consistency, inventiveness, hell, even the highest low is often considered. It’s part of the subjectivity of art and all that, which means none of us will ever agree on who the greatest filmmakers are at any given time. Yorgos Lanthimos is a contender in our current age. Even those who don’t respond to his strong, deadpan style see the intellect of his social critiques and the skillful creation of his off-kilter worlds. He’s such a great filmmaker that his abrasive films now border on mainstream ..read more

source: Netflix May December is a trick of a movie, and it doesn’t hide it. As a viewer, you’re off balance from the moment the camera zooms in, dramatic music ratcheting up the tension, and Julianne Moore remarks that they might not have enough hot dogs. Hot dogs? Why is she talking about hot dogs? We’re supposed to be here for an onscreen and offscreen battle between Moore and Natalie Portman, two acting titans, in a deliciously robust Todd Haynes film. And you are. And you aren’t. Because nothing in May December is as it seems. Ostensibly, the film is about Portman’s Elizabeth visiting the ..read more

Ari Aster makes films that are more stylish than smart, which in today’s world earns filmmakers a glowing reputation. His first film, Hereditary, dripped with familial doom until the reason for the destruction dried up the tension. His follow-up, Midsommar, set a beautiful trap that ultimately didn’t catch much. Sensing a pattern? In his short career, his films have started strong before petering out, largely because Aster’s great skill is in ratcheting up tension, not releasing it. Which, I guess, is something A24 thought he could sort out on his own with free rein and a blank check for his ..read more

Cocaine Bear is about the complicated bond between parents and children. No really, it is. There’s numerous generational pairings running between clouds of white powder, some good, some bad, all converging in a Georgia forest for a bloody trial by drug. They had to graft some structure onto the bizarre inspiration behind the madcap comedy. I mean, a bear on cocaine? When you learn that actually happened your mind spins off in a hundred different directions, snippets of wild possibilities floating around in an amorphous haze of glee. But that kind of high only lasts for a few minutes. A movie ..read more

There’s widespread mourning for the loss of a particular kind of movie. Adult films that are abrasive, bizarre, and intimately concerned with everyday anxieties don’t get made anymore, or so the conventional wisdom goes. Except there is a small group of filmmakers who can make whatever they want, capitalizing on blank checks handed out by streaming companies desperate to gain catalog clout. Writer and director Lulu Wang (not in that club) explained it perfectly while sitting next to White Noise’s writer/director Noah Baumbach (very much in the club): “It’s not necessarily about making money b ..read more

source: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures “This is who I am,” proclaims Jessica Chastain’s version of the titular televangelist in the opening scene of The Eyes of Tammy Faye, referencing not some painfully divulged truth but the revelation that her garish makeup and gaudy eyelashes are permanent fixtures on her face. How a story can spin such a moment is infinite. Does she say this confidently and in defiance of other people’s opinions? Is it a painful moment tinged by the inescapability of past mistakes? Or is it spoken obliviously, entirely unaware that her persona is one that many find i ..read more

source: Apple TV+ The first video I remember watching was my mom’s exercise tape. It’s not the answer I give when people ask because, in hindsight, a kid sitting on the floor watching women in spandex with big hair and even bigger smiles huffing and puffing is a more loaded answer than the lighthearted question is asking for, but the honest truth is that I was obsessed with this very ‘80s phenomenon and wore out that poor tape long before my mom could. Similar levels of depth and discomfort is explored in Physical, which in its first season sees Rose Byrne’s Sheila discover aerobics and envisi ..read more

source: IFC Films The internet is a vast, wild thing. To designate it good or bad is to minimize its scope, to disregard its power, to smash it down into something beyond recognition. It’s true that it entered our lives so fast that none of us thought responsibly about the claws it dug into us, but that simply makes it like so many things that have altered the course of human history: enticing, haphazard, thrilling, and prone to exploitation. Mainstream, though, is here to pass judgement, and it hands down a broad, overreaching ruling that isn’t specific enough to chill. It wants to be a great ..read more

source: Netflix I Care A Lot plays a tough game. It’s not an unfamiliar one, not by a long shot, but that doesn’t make it easy to stomach. A tale of greed and capitalism that can’t even be called allegory since it speaks of its themes directly, it’s a story of terrible people doing terrible things, and you’re not supposed to feel good about any of it. Front and center of the horror show is Marla Grayson (Rosamund Pike), introduced as a small-time swindler of the elderly under her guardianship. It’s a racket that involves willing and unwilling players in the legal and medical fields, and the ea ..read more