What about the other five “illusions?”
Dom Sinacola
Dom Sinacola is a Portland-based writer and editor. He runs a blog about Werner Herzog movies, The Werner Herzblog, and he’s also on Letterboxd.
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Dinosaurs Deserve So Much Better Than Jurassic World Rebirth
When Sincaola said “execrable” we knew it was on.
Caught by the Tides Captures 22 Years of Filmmaking Into Two Sumptuous, Sweeping Hours
Chinese writer-director Jia Zhangke is one of cinema’s truly great Wife Guys.
Pavements Is Not Just A Pavement Movie, It’s All Pavement Movies
Pavement has always been a band of uneven proportions. Forever on the precipice of the big time, the group never appeared to try hard enough, to want to be understood enough, and their creative output—off-kilter indie rock that sounded both revolutionary and unintentional—was always a little too much. They helped define a decade of independent […]
Friendship Thrives in This Golden Age of Pathetic Men
Modern life is a cage, masculinity is in crisis, Friendship is very much like I Think You Should Leave.
Keep Portland Reel Weird
[Read all of the articles in our Portland Fun Guide HERE! Looking for a print copy? Look at this handy-dandy map!—eds.] At the Oscars in March, Best Director Sean Baker took the stage with a warning: “Right now the theater-going experience is under threat. Movie theaters, and especially independently-owned theaters, are struggling, and it’s up […]
Film Review: Warfare Ups the Ante of Horror in War Films
All war movies are now anti-war movies—that is, if an anti-war movie is measured by the severity of its misery. This is an unceasing human imperative in art: to showcase our species’ darkest atrocities through a transcendent exploration of the suffering those atrocities inflict, but to go even more HAM about it than the last […]
French Documentary Direct Action Keeps Focus off Activist Faces
Direct Action has no characters. Someone may appear in one scene, and then, several sequences later, enter the frame again. Maybe. Direct Action never names anyone; it only shows you their hands—picking through a mud-heavy bucket, playing piano, or making a huge mass of dough, the camera locked on the pile of flour and pool […]
The Monkey Is a Comedy About Horror Film Body Counts
Depending on how one wants to categorize ground chuck, at least two people in The Monkey are ground into it. The first is the victim of a horse stampede, and the other becomes a meaty mess via lawnmower. We learn about the former when a sleeping bag is casually overturned, slopping out smushed man-oatmeal. The […]
Hong Kong Action Star Donnie Yen Seeks Justice (and a Fight Every 25-30 Minutes) in The Prosecutor
With an almost mathematical precision to its pulpiness, The Prosecutor, the latest action-thriller from Hong Kong superstar Donnie Yen, doles out a brutal fight scene every 25 to 30 minutes. Across two brisk hours, violence shifts proportionately between bouts of athletic knuckling, street brawls, shoot-outs, car chases, foot chases, impalings, and pummelings—all spaced out evenly, each […]
Film Review: Wolf Man Can’t Teach an Old Dog New Tricks
Universal Horror remake Wolf Man drops most werewolf lore for a self-contained story about bad dads.
The Brutalist Looms Large
The Brutalist reminds us that where there’s hype, there’s sometimes fire.
