Is Teen Spirit a legitimate feature film? Or is it 92 minutes of glistening YouTube content masquerading as one? If ever there was a movie that asked to be played on shuffle, it’s this milquetoast product predictably charting the stumbles and triumphs of the Darwinian world of competition television. It’s presented as a celebration of the hollow, plastic style of pop music … [Read more...]
Misguided direction makes ‘The Dinner’ none too edible
The structure of Oren Moverman’s The Dinner is, appropriately enough, prandial. It begins, roughly, with an aperitif, and concludes shortly after a digestif at an uber-luxurious prix fixe restaurant, the sort of dimly lit culinary castle where a wine is selected for each course, where the waiters explain the provenance of the garnish, and where the bill costs as much as an … [Read more...]
‘Christine’ lingers in sensationalism it deplores
Sarasota newswoman Christine Chubbuck, who infamously shot herself on camera in 1974, may be a tragic footnote in the history of regional television. But in 2016, her paragraph is growing larger. In one of those weird confluences of cinematic synchronicity — like 2005’s pair of Truman Capote biofilms, or this year’s dueling French and Anglo-American takes on Florence Foster … [Read more...]