‘Titane’ is a blast.

TITANE is a blast. From the opening scene it just says: here’s what I think of your sentimentality. Euro-cinema doing what it has always done best: being high fashion, provocative, and wildly innovative — The Neon Demon, Irreversible, Enter the Void. A genre mash-up, kind of a Rosemary’s Baby (defiant homage to Polanski?) involving (uh) intimacy with a car. The script might have used a little work, but you’re continually intrigued: stunningly beautiful, ludicrously violent, unpredictable set-pieces – choreographed almost like a musical. Awarded this year’s top prize in Cannes, it puts a dagger in the sand between two filmmaking worlds: could anyone even imagine this getting financed in the U.S., or by some corporate streamer? In this correct and mediocre age, apparently there is still a Europe.

Awarded this year’s top prize in Cannes, it puts a dagger in the sand between two filmmaking worlds: could anyone even imagine this getting financed in the U.S., or by some corporate streamer? In this correct and mediocre age, apparently there is still a Europe.

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‘Leviathan,’ big-canvas Russian epic.

‘Leviathan,’ big-canvas Russian epic.

If "Russian masterpiece" were a style, LEVIATHAN was filmed in it. Karamazov-like bravado and religious parables plus a nonstop flow of vodka. Unsubtle visual political symbolism (the Putin state as rotting Hobbsian whale’s carcass), this one has racked up more 10...

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‘Dunkirk’: WWII fought by male models?

‘Dunkirk’: WWII fought by male models?

I did not realize until seeing DUNKIRK that WWII was fought entirely by male models from the Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue. Nor that its commanders (like Kenneth Branagh) mostly stood around posing with binoculars, mouthing pieties through clenched jaws. Nor that...

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Another look at ‘Cecil B. Demented’

Another look at ‘Cecil B. Demented’

A film ahead of its time: I took another look at CECIL B. DEMENTED last night, a misunderstood film when it was released, still tragically neglected today. John Waters saw where movies were heading, and this futile rebellion is...

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