“Rich white guy loses all his money” is probably a really compelling pitch to other rich white guys. Cue shirtless rich dude staring bleakly into his bathroom mirror: “What if all this money is keeping me from living an authentic life?” Etc. If you’re not innately drawn to the premise, however, it’s hard to get […]
Alison Hallett
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Wrestler’s Paradise
Foxcatcher’s true crime isn’t tawdry enough
Psychological thrillers derive tension from their characters’ emotional states—from the intrigue of figuring out the subterranean motivations that drive behavior, decision-making, and relationships. Foxcatcher is more of a physical thriller: The key interpersonal dynamics unfold in the mute interplay of male bodies rolling around on a wrestling mat. (Not in a sexy way.) (A little […]
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Boys on Film
Growing up onscreen in Boyhood
Once a year for 12 years, director Richard Linklater summoned a cast of actors—including his own daughter Lorelei, who was nine when the project began, and Ellar Coltrane, who was six—to film Boyhood, an utterly unique story of an utterly conventional American childhood. Boyhood is set in the 21st century, so there are divorced parents […]
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Stop Trying to Relate to Me
Zach Braff is an emotional terrorist who must be stopped
The definitive takedown of Zach Braff’s new movie has already been written: On the website Badass Digest, Devin Faraci wrote that Braff’s work is “aimed directly at the suburban lizard brains of slightly disaffected honkies who will never know true trouble, just the nagging sense that things should be easier for them than they already […]
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Mating Rituals of the Millennial
Abortion gets rom-comical in Obvious Child
Obvious Child will always be known, first and foremost, as “the abortion comedy.” That’s the pitch, the premise, and the novelty of writer/director Gillian Robespierre’s great new film: It’s about a young woman who has an abortion and doesn’t feel bad about it. In defiance of every film trope about abortion, which insist that soul-searching […]
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Twee Noodling
Michel Gondry vs. Noam Chomsky
Michel Gondry is concerned about how documentary filmmakers use selective editing to manipulate audiences’ perceptions of reality. (Of course he is. He’s Michel Gondry. He’s like the French-iest guy ever.) And so Gondry decided to present his new film about renowned linguist Noam Chomsky as an animation, so the audience will never forget they’re watching […]
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Hicks With Issues
Joe’s boilerplate backwoods drama
Fifteen percent of the United States’ population lives in poverty. That’s a lot of poor people, living a lot of different kinds of lives. It’s weird, then, that when poor people turn up in movies and on television, their stories always seem to feature the same few elements: The South Bad teeth Weird sex stuff […]
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Shoots and Ladders
Millennials, I blame you for Divergent
If you’re unfamiliar with Veronica Roth’s wildly successful “Divergent” trilogy, I’m sorry: I can’t explain the plot or premise to you in any detail, because there’s a very good chance that in the attempt, I would fall asleep, throw up, choke on my throwup, and die. And then who would take care of my cat? […]
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Magical Thinking
Lynn Shelton gets touchy feely
A frequent criticism of mumblecore films is that nothing really happens in them, which has always struck me as a weak line of reasoning. Life doesn’t have a plot (spoiler!) and it’s still pretty interesting most of the time. But Lynn Shelton's new film Touchy Feely tweaks the formula a bit: Nothing really happens, except […]
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Just Friends
Girls, Boys, and Drinking Buddies
Human behavior, when placed under a microscope, is interesting, even if the humans under the microscope are an infuriatingly specific and privileged class of people. Yep, you guessed it—we're talking about mumblecore again. Director Joe Swanberg is best known for Hannah Takes the Stairs and Nights and Weekends. His new film, Drinking Buddies, is about […]