Romance
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Fantastic Fest ’15: Absurdist fairy tale ‘Liza, the Fox-Fairy’ is a macabre delight
Perverse, hilarious, and poignant, ‘Liza, the Fox-Fairy’ is an absurdist fairy tale that still features one of 2015’s most touching love stories. More
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Breathtaking ‘Phoenix’ reclaims beauty from devastation
Director Christian Petzold’s shattering portrait of a woman adrift in post-WWII Berlin forgoes wishful sentimentality in favor of painful re-discovery. The result is a quietly-devastating film that will haunt you for weeks to come. More
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New on Video: ‘Ninotchka’ one of the best films from Hollywood’s golden age
It’s easy to see why Ninotchka works as well as it does, and why it’s one of the best films from Hollywood’s golden age and of arguably Hollywood’s greatest year. Just look at the talent involved. More
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Tribeca 2015: ‘Man Up’ Fails to Woman Up
At 34, Nancy (Londoner-accented Lake Bell) is a flakey journalist on the reluctant look for love at the pestering of friends and family. Through a case of mistaken identity hinging on a self-help book, she winds up on a date turned epic day with Jack (Simon Pegg), an online marketing manager. Charming, right? It’s this on-the-nose “charm” which will divide audiences into lovers and haters (with this viewer falling more towards the latter). In spite of a stellar cast, Man Up falls flat on its promising premise of being a rom-com for nonbelievers. More
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Horror and romance blossom in the haunting ‘Spring’
The less you know about Spring before its arrival, the more enthralling its subtle charms. This is a delicate little gem that reveals its mysteries grudgingly; a seamless blend of moods and genres that never stops surprising you. Darkly comic and unflinchingly romantic, Spring steeps its horror mythology in realism to create a genuine sense of uneasiness. Director Justin Benson’s exquisite story of painful transformation is one of 2015’s best films. More
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Sundance 2015: ‘Z for Zachariah’ is B for Boring
Pop music warns us that you can’t hurry love. Apparently, you can’t hurry the apocalypse, either. The new sci-fi flick, Z for Zachariah, has all the hallmarks of a Young Adult schmaltz-fest, but too much depressing reality to appeal to its target audience. Genre miscalculations aside, this movie fails because of the lethargic pacing and a lack of romantic tension between its three impossibly-handsome leads. The apocalypse has never been so boring.
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‘Love Is Strange’ tells the wrong story
There is a wonderful scene in Ira Sachs’ new film, Love Is Strange, in which Ben (John Lithgow) and George (Alfred Molina) share a drink at a venerable gay bar in New York City. Ben relates a powerful story to the bartender, in which he and several gay friends marched into that very same bar […] More
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Abby Arcane Feasts on Swamp Thing’s Strange Fruit… of Love
The Montagues and the Capulets got nothing on Abby Arcane and Swamp Thing. Few romances in the big two have been so thoroughly explored and fleshed out. Abby and the dream of Alex Holland are two crazy kids caught on the wrong side of an insane monster, or on opposing sides of two of […] More
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Fone + Thorn = A Melancholy, Lovely Crush
Few romances hit harder than the first crush: powerful, inarticulate, star-crossed, lighthearted, tragic and melodramatic. Fone Bone’s puppy love for Thorn feels authentic, one of the many triumphs of Jeff Smith’s Bone. In a medium jammed with women in refrigerators, Fone’s crush is refreshingly innocent, whimsical, charming and doomed. She’s a tough but sweet human […] More
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‘The Lady Eve,’ Sturges on con artists and romance
The Lady Eve is all about the game of romance. Jean has a great monologue at the beginning of the film that really shows this game in action. While sitting at a dinner table, she narrates as various women approach Charles, in an attempt to gain his attention (“Every Jane in the room is giving him the thermometer and he feels they’re just a waste of time”). She studies Charles. What makes him tick? Is he self-conscious? What kind of woman would he like? All of this is for the purpose of conning him, which she does rather well. It also shows how love (and ultimately marriage) can be a façade. More
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‘Kill Your Darlings’ is an attention-grabbing beat movement biopic
John Krokidas’ film debut Kill Your Darlings follows the turbulent University years of famed American beat writers Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe), Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston), Lucien Carr (Dane DeHann) and William Burroughs (Ben Foster). Set in the early 1940s at Columbia University and on the streets of New York City, the film centers around the murder of David Kammerer (Michael C. Hall) and the months that led up to it. More
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‘Strangler of the Swamp,’ PRC’s best film
Strangler of the Swamp Written by Frank Wisbar and Harold Erickson Directed by Frank Wisbar USA, 1946 “Old legends – strange tales – never die in the lonely swampland. Villages and hamlets lie remote and almost forgotten. Small ferryboats glide between the shores, and the ferryman is a very important person. Day and night he […] More
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