Paul Matthews, the character played by Nicolas Cage in the new satire Dream Scenario, is many things: a husband, a father, a tenured professor of evolutionary biology, a font of insecurities and jealousies and resentments. But more than anything, in this strange, heady and ever-shifting polemic, he is a human meme. Paul tends to satisfy both the original scientific … [Read more...]
‘Mom and Dad’: Hell is mother (and father) people
In a season that has brought us Lady Bird and I, Tonya, stories about fraught, dyspeptic and sometimes-abusive relationships between parents and their offspring are at the fore of the cinematic consciousness. Mom and Dad, an anarcho-punk satire as black as a demon’s heart, is the most extreme depiction of this rift. It has something to say about the curdled ambitions and … [Read more...]
Revenge of the nerd: Stone’s crackling, gripping ‘Snowden’
Oliver Stone’s Snowden is not Laura Poitras’s Citizenfour, even if at first it’s hard to tell them apart. If you’ve seen Poitras’ Oscar-winning documentary about her and Glenn Greenwald’s clandestine interview with the game-changing whistleblower, the déjà vu is inescapable. Within minutes of Stone’s biopic, we’re back in the Hong Kong hotel room, and Stone’s actors — … [Read more...]