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There are times when Novocaine is a blast – mostly when it’s relying on the easygoing charisma of actor Jack Quaid, leaning into chemistry between Quaid and Amber Midthunder, or having fun with some of the more unconventional aspects of the le...

Nymphomaniac Volume I is possibly the best movie Lars von Trier has made since Dancer in the Dark. It doesn’t take much analysis to determine the “why” of this statement - for Nymphomaniac, the iconoclast director has dialed back the pretent...

Nymphomaniac Volume II, the continuation of the story begun by writer/director Lars von Trier in Nymphomaniac Volume I, is a clear case of a narrative running out of steam. Exhaustingly repetitive, this movie attempts many of the same things its pr...

Palindromes, the fourth feature from Todd Solondz, makes me wonder whether this director only had two good films in him. A shallow, transparent satire/social commentary, Palindromes lives and dies on a gimmick. In an attempt to do something "artist...

The realities that human beings create around themselves are, by their nature, fragile things – some more fragile than others. In her directorial debut, actress Rebecca Hall addresses the malleability of identity via her adaptation of Nella ...

In the community of elite critics, there are those who would claim that Persona is the best film ever made, placing it in the rarified atmosphere of such classics as Citizen Kane, City Lights, and Tokyo Story. Although I would agree that Perso...

Memo to director Chris Columbus: In most cases, it's a bad idea for a movie to be a direct representation of a play. "Opening up" the setting is sometimes not all that's necessary to make a stage production into something cinematic. In a theater...

For about 50 minutes, Silent House represents one of the most intense, unsettling horror movies I have recently viewed. This is Halloween territory, where the tension is so thick as to be almost unbearable. It's the kind of experience hard-core hor...

With Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness, Todd Solondz proved himself to be a daring filmmaker who will not shy away from provocative issues, even if they offend a large portion of his audience. Storytelling, Solondz's new film, is an inelegant...