Shin Godzilla
News

All bow down before the mighty Shin Godzilla

At one point in Shin Godzilla, Toho’s 29th entry in this ancient series, a character calls Godzilla a “perfect organism.” This might sound familiar to anyone who’s watched Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979): it’s how the devious android Ash describes the xenomorph. Godzilla movies don’t typically reach outside the big guy’s cultural bubble, the occasional crossover with King Kong notwithstanding. They exist within a cloistered half-century of constant reinvention; there are whole eras of Godzilla named for whoever was emperor of Japan at that time, all refracting and, frankly, diluting the original premise into a repeatable formula that yielded enjoyable-but-inessential riffs on everything…

News

The Witch is an atavistic Puritan nightmare for the ages

We’re still rounding up Fantastic Fest, bringing you impressions of our favorite films shown at the event. For all of our hot, hot takes, head over here. /// To properly explain The Witch to you, I need to give you two pieces of context. One: I grew up in rural Vermont. My house was sat off a dirt road winding through woods, woods I never really explored. They were just there, ever-present. Our town had a few ghost stories, born of boredom, I imagine. We even had our own cryptid, the Pigman, who lived in the woods near a particularly suspension-straining stretch of…

News

Green Room is a merciless, punk-as-sh*t siege movie

We’re at Fantastic Fest this week and are bringing you impressions of our favorite films shown at the event. For all of our hot, hot takes, head over here. /// “I like murder,” Green Room director Jeremy Saulnier confessed in a post-screening Q&A. This comes as no surprise. You might know Saulnier’s 2013 film Blue Ruin. If not, imagine a revenge movie where the protagonist does literally everything wrong. I wasn’t hot on that movie: it just didn’t click with me. But Green Room? Green Room tore my face off. It’s a ferocious action flick about a punk band who stumble on a murder (there it is!) and have…

News

Darling is a stunning psychohorror chamber piece

We’re at Fantastic Fest this week and are bringing you impressions of our favorite films shown at the event. For all of our hot, hot takes, head over here. /// Mickey Keating’s Darling is a lovingly-crafted Polanski mixtape. If the idea of “Repulsion, but also The Tenant” gets your juices flowing, stop reading here and find a way to watch it. Indie stalwart Lauren Ashley Carter (Jug Face, The Woman) gives an incredible performance as a woman (only called “Darling” in the film) beset both by trauma and supernatural assault; she’s withdrawn, awkward, savage, enraged, and terrifying by turns. It’s really her…

News

Kung fu epic The Assassin is impossibly, breathtakingly, stupidly gorgeous

We’re at Fantastic Fest this week and are bringing you impressions of our favorite films shown at the event. For all of our hot, hot takes, head over here. /// Hou Hsiao-Hsien has been working for a long time (he’s 68), but The Assassin has more verve than stuff from directors half his age. It’s an insanely vivid, pared-down wuxia fable that unsurprisingly won him Best Director at Cannes. From the first scenes, rendered a sumptuous inkblot black-and-white that makes the rest of the film’s color pop even more, this is thrilling, fresh stuff. Hou, along with DP Mark Lee Ping Bin (In…