Category: Film

  • Daughters of the Sexual Revolution: The Untold Story of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (2018)

    Inspiration can come in many guises. According to legend, the genesis of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders stemmed from a 1967 football game at the Cotton Bowl when Cowboys general manager Tex Schramm spotted a local stripper, Bubbles Cash, as she ambled down a staircase wearing a miniskirt and holding two spindles of cotton candy as…

  • Sin Nombre (2009)

    The directorial debut of Cary Joji Fukunaga, Sin Nombre, is an early demonstration of the filmmaker’s gifts, revealing a lyricism and visual style that elevate the material well beyond melodrama. The Spanish-language film interweaves the stories of two young people who eventually cross paths. In Chiapas, Mexico, Casper (Edgar Flores) is not your typical hood.…

  • Heathers (1988)

    If you can handle teen suicide as suitable subject matter for the blackest of black comedies, here’s a movie for you. As the flip (and dark) side of John Hughes‘ ‘80s-era youth-centric flicks, Heathers draws blood knifing through the unforgiving social hierarchies of high school. It imagines how tensions between popular kids and pariahs can…

  • Gonzo (2008)

    Print journalists don’t typically receive rock star status, but Hunter S. Thompson was far from a typical journalist. A booming, pill-popping gun nut with a wit that could cut glass, the not-so-good “doctor” practically invented gonzo journalism with subversive classics such as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign…

  • Missing (2023)

    As gimmicks go, Missing has a mildly intriguing one. The mystery-thriller unfolds entirely on screens of computers, cellphones and smartwatches. If you happened to see the 2018 thriller Searching, then you know the shtick: amateur sleuth investigates a mystery through the trappings of the internet, social media and the like. In fact, Searching‘s editors, Nicholas D. Johnson and…

  • Calvary (2014)

    Brendan Gleeson exudes world-weariness as if it were a pheromone. Craggy and thick-bodied, his eyes hinting at untold sadness, he routinely makes a strong presence in most of his movies, no matter how modest the part. And he is at his dour best in Calvary, a tough, theologically minded film in which Gleeson portrays a…

  • Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

    The first thing you might notice about the vampires in Only Lovers Left Alive is how effortlessly cosmopolitan they are. Smart, artsy, sexy — these undead are unequivocally cool. That’s no surprise when you consider this is the work of writer-director Jim Jarmusch, a purveyor of the idiosyncratic (Dead Man, Night on Earth, Ghost Dog:…

  • The Believer (2011)

    The phrase “self-loathing Jew” is rife with provocative and unsettling meaning for Jews. For a people whose shared identity and history is partly tied to having endured persecution and injustice, some Jews might recoil from a sense of victimization that gnaws away at them even while remaining proud of their perseverance. Or maybe I’m wrong.…