Imagine a mid-90s rom-com penned in part by Denis Leary and you'd probably get pretty close to the humour and general thrust of Two if by Sea. I suspect the margin of error is minuscule. In the aftermath of one last job, a ne'er-do'well thief and his cashier girlfriend flee to New England, find themselves occupying a massive coastal manor, and befriend a ragtag collection of locals. It's completely true to the form—deadbeat boyfriend pulls it together when good-hearted girlfriend…
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Too Old to Die Young 2019
Big caveat with the rating here, since I spent equal parts of this slow-cinema crime thing rapt at the edge of my seat, marveling at Refn's unrestrained and often downright perverse assemblage of image and sound, and just kind of disinterested, occasionally fighting the urge to check my email or read a book. Though to its credit, I think that's by design. It's what Refn means when he says Too Old to Die Young isn't a movie or a series,…
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Earwig 2021
Once again, Lucile Hadžihalilović hits the ground dreaming with ambivalent caretakers and an almost overwhelming number of signifiers. Earwig is, for all its stillness, always in flux, caught between a fairy tale and a horror film, and routinely soaked in otherworldly postwar malaise. Every frame is a stunning collage of greens, ambers, and reds—and don't even get me started on the exterior shots, which make incredible use of texture and pattern. You can almost smell the rain, run your fingers…
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Dead Ringers 1988
Plays like a reconsideration, or at least a re-framing, of the kinds of questions David Cronenberg has been chasing his entire career. It's not a clean division—Cronenberg's preceding take on King has a rich psychological component, while his subsequent adaptations of Burroughs and Ballard go hard with organisms in various states of mutation and duress—but Dead Ringers nevertheless feels transitional. It's not so much about the body as porous, vulnerable, or out of control as it is about the body…
