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The Killer 2023
In chapter one of The Killer (2023), Michael Fassbender sits in a Paris WeWork office, rented as the base of operations for his nameless hitman’s latest job. While waiting for the target, pigeons fly past, their wings loudly breaking his forced concentration. The odds they entered the frame at a serendipitous moment are low, and there’s no reason to pay for a bird wrangler given the advanced state of CG. Once you see them, they’re impossible to unsee as they…
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Between the Temples 2024
Formally, Between The Temples displays what can non-reductively be labeled “a fondness for ‘70s films.” The grain-heavy 16mm look is established DP Sean Price Williams, who has no fear of rapid zooms in or out. Since the soundtrack lacks the budget for recognizable English-language classic rock hits, instead we get Hebrew-language psych, Arik Einstein songs audibly in the period pocket. That “throwback but different” approach extends to the comedy’s generously relaxed rhythms, which let its talented performers comfortably stretch out…
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Frances Ha 2012
This is the kind of movie that causes strongly polarized reactions based on each viewer's capacity to tolerate/recognize/empathize with those on-screen. Some people just can't handle watching 20-/30-something white people undergo minor crises within a basically privileged framework, which is understandable. (That said, I'm not sure why someone with that mindset would ever go watch ANY NOAH BAUMBACH MOVIE and ask afterwards — as some guy did — " if it had any sort of larger social context… besides only…
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Magic Mike XXL 2015
Magic Mike XXL is a putatively "modest"/"small" film — $14.8 million budget, 28-day shooting schedule, a shambling road movie meant to showcase extended musical numbers and largely excising the first film's recessionary panic. (Business is discussed, specifically the hustle of running a small business, but it's not the dominant throughline motivating everything as in the first, a line of inquiry Soderbergh pursued in Erin Brockovich, Bubble and The Girlfriend Experience, in ways that increasingly played like a meta-text about his…