Upstream Color challenges my immediate distaste for editing that has an average shot length this frustratingly short. It makes enough sense to mirror the protagonists' fractured identities through choppy rhythms, but what is ultimately more pronounced is the film's scatterbrained pace; keeping time with an ADHD tempo. Shane Carruth's wordless passages of imagery are often striking--a far-cry from the technical jargon-heavy dialogue of Primer--if only they were free to linger on-screen for deeper consideration. Upstream Color is firmly influenced by…

Here's a film that's in debt to the Dardennes to a ludicrous degree; a hackneyed application of the Belgian brothers themes and techniques, right down to the attempt at an equivocal, rapturous climax. All of the boxes have been checked: A flagrant Jesus allegory in Mickey Rourke's broken-down piece of meat; the milieu of small-town Jersey and its working-class struggle; relentless behind-the-back tracking shots (and static shots from the back seat) that maintain "The Ram" as the center of attention.…

With Crank: High Voltage, the renowned symbol of a gun-as-phallic-object is brought to its logical conclusion: Lubed up in hot tar and ready to fuck. No wonder Neveldine/Taylor’s avant-garde vulgarity has elicited “fin de cinéma” reactions.

A funny realization sinks in early during High Voltage: It’s as though the first Crank acted as a desensitizing agent on your senses, removing those thoughts of plausibility while also making the increasing outrageousness more tolerable. This method of softening the viewer gives Neveldine/Taylor…

What would John Berger have to say about the Internet phenomenon of lolcats and other animal-related memes? Our penchant for humorous image macros featuring animals has become so widespread that, in some circles, it’s essentially synonymous with the Internet itself, but the unexplored byproduct of this infatuation points to the ever-dwindling relationship between humans and animals—our “parallelism,” as Berger aptly puts it—and how digital anthropomorphism segregates our bond by one more degree.

The meme is the latest manner in which…