REVIEW: The Night House [2021]

You’re safe now. Beth (Rebecca Hall) is left a widow without warning the day her husband Owen (Evan Jonigkeit) decided to take his own life with a gun she didn’t even know he owned. The boat has been cleaned (he covered it in plastic and took off his clothes before pulling the trigger), but it’s hard not to look at it and think about the horror it witnessed. That’s why their neighbor Mel (Vondie Curtis-Hall) decided to cover it “for the season” and why Beth can’t help lingering by the…

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REVIEW: Vox Lux [2018]

Simply put: it was a hit. America lost its innocence on 9/11. It wasn’t an overnight thing, though. The gradual degradation of humanity on an ever-shrinking global landscape stewarded us there as school shootings and terrorist attacks grew with their weak links towards violent videogames rather than an otherwise Puritan sense of sex being worse than murder. Our repressed selves fought against growing malaise until that day provided a scapegoat to blame. We turned our internal rage onto an undeserving people suddenly reduced to their worst and smallest faction so…

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REVIEW: Le Redoutable [Godard Mon Amour] [2017]

I was lucky enough to admire my lover. We’re introduced to Emile (Marc Fraize) halfway through Michel Hazanavicius‘ Le Redoubtable [Godard Mon Amour]. He’s a local Frenchman with a car and the means to procure enough gas to drive an argumentative Jean-Luc Godard (Louis Garrel), his wife Anne Wiazemsky (Stacy Martin), and their friends (Micha Lescot‘s Bamban, Bérénice Bejo‘s Michèle, and Grégory Gadebois‘ Michel Cournet) home from Cannes. His inclusion moves the film forward from place to place while also providing a stand-in for we the viewers caught watching Godard’s…

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REVIEW: Nymphomaniac: Vol. I [2014]

“Mea Vulva. Mea Maxima Vulva.” I don’t intend it to be a smirk at those who think otherwise, but Lars von Trier‘s Nymphomaniac: Vol. I is much tamer than I expected. I’m not sure why I thought it would simply be gratuitous sex from start to finish—I guess I let the hype surrounding it taint what I knew and loved about the auteur’s work. There is sex, don’t get me wrong, enough even to be considered straight porn if it were 90-minutes in length. But this installment is almost twice…

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