Marc Mohan

Mary Queen of Scots is the latest effort to bring 16th century British historical drama into the millennial age, and for better and worse, it bears many of the hallmarks of such an effort: It’s got two legitimate movie stars at its core, with Saoirse Ronan as the titular monarch and Margot Robbie as her […]

If the term “hot mess” didn’t already exist, it would need to be invented to describe The Other Side of the Wind. If you don’t know (and if you don’t already, you probably don’t care), this is the reincarnated corpse of what would have been the final film by Orson Welles. (I could make a […]

I’ve seen enough locally made documentaries over the years to know that “heartfelt” and “homegrown” don’t automatically make a movie great. But a couple of Oregon-made nonfiction flicks stood out in 2017, each of them viewing a national issue through a Northwest lens. No Man’s Land was shot during the occupation of the Malheur National […]

Let’s talk about Sam Rockwell for a minute. There’s a lot of other talent in the awkwardly, memorably titled Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Frances McDormand is predictably, fiercely awesome; Woody Harrelson demonstrates unexpected nuance; and writer/director Martin McDonagh takes his patented mixture of profanity and profundity to new levels. But I’d argue that Three […]

Sam Rockwell… well, rocks in Martin McDonagh’s latest.

Through the eyes of a satirist, the world of contemporary art museums is what one might call a “target-rich environment.” Pretense, hypocrisy, decadence—they’re all there, just waiting to be mocked. And the mercilessly acerbic Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund, whose Force Majeure was one of the sharpest critiques of matrimony and masculinity in recent memory, would […]

It’s the snobs against the slobs!

Michael Winterbottom’s latest, The Trip to Spain, continues the shenanigans first chronicled in 2010’s The Trip and 2014’s The Trip to Italy: Actor/comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon travel to fancy restaurants, ostensibly for review purposes, but really so they can do dueling Michael Caine impressions and wax humorously on the foibles of middle-aged manhood. […]

“I do like the idea of heading up into the Arctic Circle and leaving Steve and Rob in some frozen wasteland somewhere.”

Detroit in 1967. America in 2017.

Oh, crap, not another remake. Can’t these yahoos in Hollywood come up with a single goddamn original idea? Next thing you know, they’ll be making another Blade Runner. But wait! What’s this? A film, based on an earlier film, that actually justifies its existence, and then some? Well, what do you know. By taking the […]