★★★★☆

Dir. Josh Trank. 2012. PG-13. 83mins. Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, Michael B. Jordan.

Why are we filming this? That’s the question that plagues a number of found-footage flicks, from Cloverfield to Paranormal Activity to the genre’s great-granddaddy, The Blair Witch Project. Once the freaky-deaky shit starts happening, the characters’ urge to continually roll camera can feel increasingly contrived. (Dude, there’s a growly, rampaging Godzilla thing stormin’ toward ya…Run!) The superhuman-juveniles-run-amok thriller Chronicle succeeds by mainly treating the why as…

★★★☆☆

Dir. Noel Black. 1968. N/R. 89mins. Anthony Perkins, Tuesday Weld, Beverly Garland.

He’s a disturbed young man just out of a mental institution. She’s a small-town high-school girl whose most exciting daily activity is marching-band practice. Sounds like a match made in movie heaven. The head case, Dennis Pitt, is played by none other than Anthony Perkins, and the initial scenes of Noel Black’s dark comic thriller playfully trade on his iconic character from that flick about an isolated…

[Published as part of New Pollution #2]

The irritatingly genteel Nomadland, adapted from a nonfiction book by Jessica Bruder, appears well on its way to golden statuettes and other year-end plaudits. For writer-director-editor Chloé Zhao this is the last stop before the Marvel Moloch grinds her personal stamp, such as it is, to a pre-viz’d pulp with The Eternals. I didn’t much care for the mannered neo-realism of The Rider, but at least it could fall back on the authenticity…

[Published at (All (Parentheses))]

Hilarious that many are taking Brady Corbet’s three-and-a-half-hour-with-onscreen-intermission intima-epic The Brutalist as a Classic Hollywood throwback when it’s more a punkish wolf in sheep’s clothing. Hardly a loving riff on Citizen Kane or The Godfather, it’s more accurately Buffalo Bill parading the flayed skin of Elia Kazan’s America America. Corbet has now so fully assimilated the influences of acknowledged mentors Haneke and Von Trier that he’s come up with his own exceedingly entertaining jape: Propulsive awards-bait…