You’ve heard of cringe comedy? The first half or so of Mark O’Brien’s heavy spiritual/psychological thriller The Righteous is cringe drama. That’s not really a put-down. In scene after scene, O’Brien’s camera stares at people clumsily working through grief or uncertainty, and never averts its gaze. One or two times…

When River’s Edge opened in America (35 years ago on May 8), reviewers and columnists chased it around like cartoon reporters waving their mics at a murder suspect. They probed it for social meaning, decided it was a commentary on the affectless kids of baby boomers (meaning, the kids of…

A work of art or entertainment can have a lot on its mind and under its hood, but if you don’t like it, you don’t like it, and no amount of sophisticated subtext is going to make you like it. Which brings us to Ti West’s X, a nasty retro…

“Yes, it’s innocent and good. It fills the heart.” “You said the same about Eraserhead.” “Don’t mention that obscenity,” Kinderman growled. “Atkins calls it Long Day’s Journey into Goat.” — William Peter Blatty, Legion David Lynch’s Eraserhead — celebrating the 45th anniversary of its festival premiere on March 19 —…

When you Google Paul Thomas Anderson’s film Licorice Pizza, you get a list of questions people have asked about it. The first question, amusingly, is “What was the point of Licorice Pizza?” The point, since you may be one of many who ask, is to ramble and stroll, sink into…

F.W. Murnau’s masterwork continues to chill For many of us, our first exposure to F.W. Murnau’s seminal Nosferatu (which celebrates the 100th anniversary of its release on March 4) was via the video for “Under Pressure,” by Queen and David Bowie — surely the feyest team-up in pop-music history. All…

Have the people who made Netflix’s new Texas Chainsaw Massacre ever used a chainsaw? The tool wielded by Leatherface (Mark Burnham) cuts through flesh, bone, wood, and metal with equal (and implausible) ease, like a hot knife carving an ice-cream cake. Not bad for a weapon that’s been literally sitting…

SPOILER ALERT. It’s useless to deny it: near the end of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, when the spectre of Harold Ramis stepped in to help save the day, it got a little dusty in the room. Soft and warm where the original 1984 Ghostbusters was sharp and cool, this legacy sequel is…

Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch is that rarity, a disappointment that I feel I need to see again. By now, we all know how polarizing Anderson’s dollhouse movies tend to be. They’re immaculately designed, obsessively symmetrical; they’re boxes within boxes, each packed in a ruthlessly tidy fashion. But generally the…