Sanford and Sun Ra
Instrumental combo Medeski, Martin and Wood are willing to make you groove: Wherever, whenever and however.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
The thrill of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is just about gone from this fourth installment in the Massacre series, now replaced by abject weirdness and a little off-camera bone-crunching. And don’t go expecting the “guts” that the title always calls up in your imagination — come to think of it, the Tobe Hooper original…
Hoodlum
If there was any doubt that Hoodlum’s cinematic model is the masterful mobster epic, The Godfather (1972), it’s erased when the somber survivors of a bloody ambush, Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson (Laurence Fishburne) and Stephanie St. Clair (Cicely Tyson), deal with their shock and grief by sitting very quietly together and listening to music. This is…
In the Company of men
Writer-director Neil LaBute’s debut feature is a Swiftian fable about the evils of male chauvinist piggery, deceptively presented as a realistic drama exposing the horrors of the white-collar class. The film centers around Chad (Aaron Eckhart), a handsome young sociopath and his hapless sidekick Howard (Matt Malloy), a bumbling schlump in dire need of direction…
She’s So Lovely
For many film historians, the current independent American cinema can be traced back to the pioneering work of one filmmaker: actor-director John Cassavetes (1929-89). From Shadows (1960) to A Woman Under the Influence (1974) to Love Streams (1984), Cassavetes specialized in raw, emotional cinema. His camera would gaze intensely at an actor long after other…
Star Maps
As Star Maps opens, Carlos (Douglas Spain) is on a bus heading from Mexico to Los Angeles when suddenly his fellow passengers recognize him. They gravitate toward him, asking for autographs as their faces morph into masks of adoration. Then, in a flash, that scene is gone: Carlos sits as anonymous as his fellow passengers,…
