The film opens with a simple premise, a missing woman, which would suggest a straightforward plot, two men searching for her, yet Citarella unspools a fascinatingly complex, lightly absurdist tale of obsessive searches, love and the negotiation of independence, and science fictionish reaches that lend the story a metaphorical resonance. Weaving between past and present, reliving certain moments from two perspectives, and building layers of mystery and inquiry that feel organic as they accrete yet dizzying in their complexity upon reflection, plot strands spinning out and leading the film in different directions time after time, yet guided with an elegant hand.
Favorite films
Recent activity
AllRecent reviews
More-
-
Under the Yum-Yum Tree 1963
A two-joke premise—Lemmon the leach and the travails of a horny young man at the hands of a prim woman—that leans heavily on one-note hyuks and uninspired farce. Fortunately, the film is a riot of production design, the color motifs and design schemes just as wildly over-pronounced as the comedy, yet with a flair and mid-century grandeur. Lynde and Lemmon find themselves in the groove of the vapid comedy and stereotyped, retrograde gender dynamics, their delivery and physicality outmatching the writing and nearly all other performances.
Popular reviews
More-
Sicario 2015
The strength of Villeneuve's intensely muscular direction, Deakins's gloomily gorgeous and evocatively atmospheric cinematography, and Jóhannsson's lush score set a spectacularly grim, fatalistic air of dread-soaked taut tension that lends Sheridan's overly glib, cynically nihilistic drug-war horror story a pulpy tone. The film's pulpiness helps to trim away the shallow nihilism of its moral commentary by amplifying the gruesome horrors of the film's bleakly nihilistic world and the grim amorality of its characters, overpowering Sheridan's didactic intentions and delivering a…
-
Mission: Impossible – Fallout 2018
McQuarrie returns to the series with an understanding of the elements involved--the players and their strengths, the expected action quotient, and the relevant plot points to hit--and brings a deftness to the execution that balances the globe-spanning espionage theatrics and horizon-expanding action sequences with casual, quippy comedy and a seedling of emotional investment in its characters' lives--Hunt's romances never entirely convincing given Cruise's paternal air, but the friendships lend resonance to the life-threatening escapades, making the stakes personal--that, together, make…