Jessica first heard the bang in the early morning hours. It’s an unearthly sound, a loud thump she describes as a big concrete ball falling into a metallic well surrounded by seawater. Certainly not a sound you hear every day. … Continue reading MEMORIA
Reporting from the 2022 Telluride Film Festival. A shadow in the desert, fish flopping on the floor of an L.A. Metro train, a child who does not wish to be born is pushed back into his mother. These are but … Continue reading BARDO, FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS
Zama—the latest from Argentinean writer/director Lucrecia Martel—opens with a parable: There is a fish, a long-suffering fish, which spends its days in the very waters that try to cast it out. The water, which does not want the fish, tries … Continue reading ZAMA
It doesn’t take much to fill one with despair and the general sense that the world is indifferent to your plight, but nothing can drive a person to the brink like dealing with an insurance company. The paperwork, the type … Continue reading A MONSTER WITH A THOUSAND HEADS
The broad strokes are ingrained in all of us: the evil stepmother, a banished princess, seven dwarfs, a glass coffin, and a poison apple. Blancanieves, a Spanish production of the familiar tale of Snow White, snatches the tale back from Uncle Walt … Continue reading BLANCANIEVES
Michael J. Cinema 