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Annihilation Review: It Is Flawed, But Unforgettably Mind-Bending

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Photo: Peter Mountain/Paramount Pictures “The tower, which was not supposed to be there,” is not even a full opening sentence, and yet the first nine words of Jeff VanderMeer’s  Annihilation  told the reader at least nine things within a second. There are obviously things you can get away with more easily in a book than in a film, but that anonymous AirDrop into the mysterious Area X, whose uncanny nature becomes the focal point for a trilogy of novels, is something Hollywood could learn from. It also sets up a trilogy in which perception, and the inevitable breakdown of something like a shared reality — as emblematized by that very tower (or staircase, if you like) plays a central role. The tower is in fact  not  there in Alex Garland’s adaptation of VanderMeer’s novel, both literally and in a more spiritual sense. At first this feels like a lost opportunity; how cinematically fun would it be to play with the book’s warped perspective, its narcotic disorientation? But Garland
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Foxtrot: Movie Review

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Foxtrot.   Photo: Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics Samuel Maoz’s alternately acclaimed and reviled Israeli drama  Foxtrot  is thick with grief, confusion, and metaphor, the last of which extends to the title. Foxtrot is the name of an isolated desert checkpoint on a supply road trafficked by Palestinian cars and itinerant camels. But it’s also, of course, a dance, a box step Maoz uses to evoke life in a traumatized, blindly militaristic state where one “always winds up at the same starting point.” Under normal circumstances, I’d poke fun at all the movie’s egregious literary contrivances — the kind that make my Metaphor Horn go  Ah-ooga! Ah-ooga!  But a filmmaker able to speak  wholly  in metaphor is a rare kind of artist: a director-poet. Maoz grips you from his opening scene, in which a woman, Dafna (Sarah Adler), opens the door of her apartment — note the painting behind her, a snarl of black lines — and, after a beat, begins to scream and weep, understanding that the sol
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Black Panther 2018 Marvel Movie Review & Film Summary

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Black Panther 2018 Marvel Movie Review & Film Summary In 1992, a little Black kid on a makeshift basketball court in Oakland, California disrupts his game to glance up at the sky. Figuratively, he’s looking at the loss of hope, a departure represented by glowing lights drifting away into the night. As we learn later, those lights belong to a futuristic flying machine returning to the mysterious African country of Wakanda, the setting of “Black Panther.” The young man was once told by his father that Wakanda had the most wonderful sunsets he would ever see, so he cradles that perceived vision of beauty through his darkest hours. When he finally sees the sun go down over Wakanda, it provokes a haunting emotional response. That same response will be felt by viewers of “Black Panther,” one of the year’s best films, and one that transcends the superhero genre to emerge as an epic of operatic proportions. The numerous battle sequences that are staples of the genre are
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Veronica Netflix Movie Review

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FILM FACTORY New movies and TV shows arrive so quickly on Netflix these days that it’s hard to keep track of exactly what’s gathering dust on the virtual shelf. With the streaming company creating a massive stockpile of original content — it will release 80 original films in 2018 and hopes to have 700 original series by the end of the year — it’s inevitable that some gems will slip through the cracks.  Veronica , a Spanish ghost thriller in the vein of  The Conjuring , debuted on the platform back in February with little fanfare, but horror fans are discovering the movie — and digging into the terrifying true story that inspired it. While  Veronica  wasn’t produced or acquired by Netflix — it’s not a “Netflix original”like the recent wilderness horror sleeper  The Ritual  — it did quietly pop up on the service after screening at the Toronto Film Festival last year. The latest movie from  REC  mastermind Paco Plaza, Veronica  is a  Ouija -obsessed ghost story about a you
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