The comedy HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE which played at Tribeca on Thursday has made me want to go back and explore the filmography of director Taika Waititi. Because if HUNT is any indication, Waititi is likely destined to become New Zealand’s answer to America’s Wes Anderson and England’s Edgar Wright—a highly-idiosyncratic and stylized comedic filmmaker. But whereas the bulk of Anderson and

Ever notice that it’s almost always a bad sign when an R-rated animated movie brags about being an R-rated animated movie? The one exception might be SOUTH PARK: BIGGER, LONGER AND UNCUT (1999), but other than that the pickings are slim. I had this realization watching Chris Prynoski’s NERDLAND, a very graphic animated comedy filled to the brim with boobs, boners, and buttholes. The first feature film by animation house Titmouse

Andrew Rossi’s new documentary THE FIRST MONDAY IN MAY is gorgeous, sumptuous. It’s also undercooked. The film follows the inception, creation, and opening gala for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2015 fashion exhibition “China: Through the Looking Glass.” The exhibit itself was a massive celebration and rumination on the tenuous relationship between Western fashion and Chinese culture curated by the renowned

Richard Linklater is uniquely qualified to make a film like EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!! By that, I mean he’s the fairly rare filmmaker who was a certifiable jock--both the quarterback and star pitcher for high school teams in Houston and Huntsville, Texas. A baseball scholarship helped pay for college. That perspective informs the athletes of his most famous film, DAZED AND CONFUSED (which, chances are, is probably playing on a cable

DEMOLITION is off from the first frame and never grounds itself enough to make a coherent argument. Hard to tell whether it’s Jake Gyllenhaal’s perplexed expression as he endeavors to show himself empty of emotions after the accidental death of his wife or the ill-thought storyline that appears to go in one direction and then unexplainably veers into another. Jean-Marc Vallée, who previously directed the excellent

MARGUERITE ET JULIEN, which comes out this week, had everyone talking before its premiere at the 2015 Cannes Festival--the story deals with incest, after all, a taboo subject which should probably always remain taboo. Adapted from an original screenplay written by Jean Gruault for none other than French new wave master François Truffaut, MARGUERITE ET JULIEN stars French actors Jérémie Elkaïm and Anaïs

The story of Olympics legend Jesse Owens has always stuck with me. Not because of the glory of winning four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin games, setting records in front of Adolf Hitler. It has stuck with me because it haunts me – that a man could be a national hero one day and then struggle in the longer RACE of life. RACE doesn’t cover much of Owens’ life outside of his athletic peak. Being a pretty lame inspirational