Why I hated and felt cheated by Martin Scorsese’s latest — Killers of the Flower Moon is bookended by two images- a look towards the god and a view from their vantage point”. Martin Scorsese opens with the camera peering upwards, hands hovering over the lens, at the ceremonial honoring of a dead Osage Medicine Man in a tent. The viewer…

On the disco-pop dictator musical from David Byrne, Fatboy Slim, and Alex Timbers — Gazing up from the floor towards the heavens, the DJ (Moses Villarma) stands at the top right corner, his arms extended ready to conduct the crowd’s hopefully raucous energy. He points to all the sides of the balcony and the back down at us on the floor, while the entire…

How weed changed the way i watch films — (Author’s Note: This piece originally was commissioned at the Boston Globe. They killed it at the last minute.) I saw James Cameron’s “Avatar: The Way of Water” in IMAX, sitting in a folding chair (don’t ask), eating contraband roast pork buns, and feeling blissed out on a 10 mg edible…

A little indie queer romcom came out on Amazon — With the light of the sun scalding the tiles of the communal kitchen, Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung bend and sway and hold each other’s hearts with each tango movement. They hold each other close, their foreheads pressing together, arms resting on shoulders or wrapping tight around waists, legs sliding…

About twelve blocks away from the apartment Frances (Greta Gerwig) shares with her best friend Sophie (Mickey Sumner) in Prospect Heights, which is right by the towering Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch that overlooks a stretch of downtown Brooklyn and the park, is the apartment I’ve been living in since…

Alan Paul’s revival is a flash in the can can — Blown up like a monstrous bouquet of broken shards, a mirror looms above and behind the Barrington Stage Company’s spin on the Kit Kat Club. The band is seated before the jagged shapes, elegant cursive K’s on their bandstand in front of them. The slices warp and bend the dancers’…

Jennifer Lawrence’s new sex comedy gave me Lubitsch vibes — There’s not much sex in No Hard Feelings, an R rated comedy starring Jennifer Lawrence as a woman named Maddie who is basically using sex as a form of capital. When replying to an ad to scare quotes date the socially awkward son (Andrew Barth Feldman) of two enormously wealthy…

(Author’s Note: This was originally written for Metrograph’s publication in 2019, but when they revamped their still barely functional…

Would you believe that it’s taken six Scream movies to kill off a film studies professor? They’ve slashed their way through chatty cinephiles, a director, and other kinds of sycophants, but it isn’t until now, in Scream VI, that they’ve finally made good on their flirtation with the disposing of…