From the Collection: Werckmeister Harmonies

From the Collection: Werckmeister Harmonies

Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky’s Werckmeister Harmonies is one of the newest films added to the Criterion Collection. Adapted from a novel by László Krasznahorkai, Werckmeister Harmonies unfolds in an unknown time in an unnamed village in Hungary, where, one day, a mysterious circus—complete with an enormous stuffed whale and a shadowy, demagogue-like figure known as the Prince—arrives and appears to awaken a kind of madness in the citizens that builds inexorably toward violence. Shot in stark…

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Movie Review: Drive-Away Dolls

Movie Review: Drive-Away Dolls

  In 2019, Joel and Ethan Coen, the award-winning filmmaking brothers behind such films as Raising Arizona, Fargo, and The Big Lebowski, announced that they were splitting up because Ethan Coen was “giving movies a rest” and wanted to focus on stage plays and did not want to work on Joel’s next project, The Tragedy of Macbeth. Ethan has now returned to the directors’ chair with Drive-Away Dolls, a zany lesbian road-trip movie that felt…

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From the Collection: The Runner

From the Collection: The Runner

Amir Naderi’s 1984 film The Runner is the latest film to enter the Criterion Collection.  Inspired by director Amir Naderi’s own boyhood, The Runner is lit from within by Madjid Niroumand’s electrifying performance as a young orphan fending for himself on the streets of a port city, determined to rise above his circumstances—working odd jobs, passing time with friends, learning to read—and running, always running, toward the future. Water, fire, the human body in motion: in hypnotic images…

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Oscar Predictions 2024: Who Will Win and Who Should Win

Oscar Predictions 2024: Who Will Win and Who Should Win

The 2024 Academy Awards are here! Despite hardly ever agreeing with who wins at the Oscars and the constant controversy surrounding the nominees and the show in general, I always get excited about Oscar night. Like most years, some categories seemed locked up based on precursors and awards-season wins. This year feels more predictable than most, but there are still a few battles that I am excited to see and I’m sure there will be…

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Ranked: 2024 Oscar Best Picture Nominees

Ranked: 2024 Oscar Best Picture Nominees

The 2024 Academy Awards are here, which means the 2023 movie year is almost officially over. This year’s Oscars finds Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer leading the way in nominations with thirteen, followed by Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things with eleven nominations, and Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon with ten nominations, respectively.  This year’s group of Best Picture nominees is one of the best we have seen in quite some time. Six of the ten films nominated…

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Movie Review: Madame Web

Movie Review: Madame Web

  I normally don’t pay attention to the press tours of movies, where the filmmakers and the actors are interviewed by dozens upon dozens of media and press outlets to promote their latest movie, but it was impossible to escape the press tour for Madame Web, particularly the clips involving the film’s star Dakota Johnson. Johnson’s dry, off-beat brand of humor was in full force in these interviews, as she talked about how “chaotic” shooting…

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Movie Review: Dune: Part Two

Movie Review: Dune: Part Two

  Movies don’t get much bigger than Denis Villenuve’s Dune: Part Two, the action-packed and surprisingly emotional continuation of 2021’s Dune: Part One. Dune: Part Two continues the story of Paul Atreidis (Timothée Chalamet) and his journey to get revenge on House Harkonnen for killing his father and overtaking House Atreidis on the planet of Arrakis. Part Two picks up right where Part One ended with Paul and his mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) having joined…

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2024 Sundance Film Festival Movie Review: Winner

2024 Sundance Film Festival Movie Review: Winner

  In my review last year of Sophia Coppola’s Priscilla, I wrote briefly about movies with similar subjects coming out within a year of each other, like Armageddon and Deep Impact, Wyatt Earp and Tombstone, Elvis and Priscilla, and the list goes on. We’ve just done that again in the forms of Reality and Winner, two films that look at NSA whistleblower Reality Winner (her actual name) who leaked government documents in 2017 showing Russia’s…

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Movie Review: Argylle

Movie Review: Argylle

  Watching Argylle, the latest action film from director Matthew Vaugh, was an astounding experience because I can’t think of a movie where I could feel and see it getting worse with every passing minute. What starts off as a fun spy romance soon balloons into a film that is so focused on attempting to trick the audience and amaze us with action sequences (it fails on both counts) that it loses everything good about…

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2024 Sundance Film Festival Movie Review: Will & Harper

2024 Sundance Film Festival Movie Review: Will & Harper

  Will Ferrell is one of the great comedic actors of the 2000s, starring in iconic comedies like Old School, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy, and The Other Guys. Will & Harper finds Ferrell in a new light as he is at the center of director Josh Greenbaum’s documentary as Ferrell and his best friend of thirty years Harper Steele take a cross-country road trip together following Steele coming out to Ferrell and transgender….

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