Retro Review by Zach Dennis
There Was a Father carries a pastoral setting and nostalgia for a pre-war naiveté. Much like the other Japanese master, Ozu finds a small oasis among the modern angst to remember another time, though with the foresight of the wisdom of years to guide him.
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Retro Review by Cam Watson
Miyazaki’s impact on animation is massive. However, there has always seemed to be some dissonance between the way Miyazaki is received and the way he views his own career. The Wind Rises unpacks that dissonance in a satisfying way, while managing to incorporate a powerfully realistic emotional core.
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Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin star in It’s Complicated by director Nancy Myers
Retro Review by Will Carr
Meyers’s strict adherence to the romance formula has made it easy for critics to dismiss her work, but her 2009 film It’s Complicated provides the perfect framework for what a Nancy Myers movie can be.
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Giulietta Masina stars in director Federico Fellini’s film Nights of Cabiria
Retro Review by Miranda Barnewall
As a senior in high school, I felt that my desires to be a “strong, independent woman” and wanting a loving, committed romantic partner seemed contradictory, if not impossible. This film interrogates this paradox in a way that I didn’t think any film could adequately capture, exploring the desire for connection based on who you are and not because of what you have, and the longing to surrender that armor by putting your complete trust in someone else.
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Review by Reece Beckett
On the surface, BlacKkKlansman is a freewheeling throwback buddy-cop comedy, but underneath this surface it reviles institutionalized racism (wherever it comes from - the Klan, Hollywood or the police) in a way rarely done by anyone but Spike currently.
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Retro Review by Joshua Allen
Ghostwatch affects so deeply because it uses its ghosts to reckon with abuse and violence, and the ways that British society has allowed these abuses to continue.
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Harold Lloyd stars in the classic silent comedy Safety Last!
Retro Review by Miranda Barnewall
The clock scene is enough to merit a viewing of Safety Last! It’s the climax of the movie and still has the impact that it did in 1923. But for me, it was the scenes apart from the clock sequence – the everyday sequences – that drew me in.
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Retro Review by Zach Dennis
There isn’t much profound about the men of Elaine May movies – they’re all dullards. For the most part though, she has empathy for their sadness.
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Retro Review by Reid Ramsey
25 years following the release of Speed, the film remains one of the quintessential action movies of the 1990s.
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Retro Review by Ash Baker
This film has something to say about musicianship in an age where everyone who has a Macbook or an iPhone has instant songwriting software, and quite a bit more to say about what does or doesn’t make an artist.
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Retro Review by Reid Ramsey
Last week, charges were brought against Felicity Huffman as part of an investigation of a widespread college admissions scandal. There’s one strange caveat in all of it, though: the document fails to mention Huffman’s husband, William H. Macy, and only ever refers to him as “spouse.” While it can be dubious to compare real-life crimes to fictional ones, this whole situation did have me asking one question: If given the opportunity, how might Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) have committed this crime?
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Abbie Cornish stars as Fannie Brawne in director Jane Campion’s film Bright Star
Retro Review by Diana Rogers
The genius of this movie is that it takes a premise that's been done time and time again – by daytime drama and YA novels alike – and transforms it into something that is both accessible and transcendent. It's a viewing experience worth luxuriating in.
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Rhys Fehrenbacher stars as J in director Anahita Ghazvinizadeh’s They
Retro Review by Ash Baker
I would love to have seen a movie about the struggle a young trans/non-binary person faces when they realize their body doesn’t necessarily match their mind. I would love to have seen a movie about how the world behaves in binaries even when some of us don’t fit into them—democrat or republican, gay or straight, male or female, Friends or Seinfeld.
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“Rowdy” Roddy Piper stars in director John Carpenter’s They Live
Retro Review by Nadine Smith
Though its iconography may have been appropriated by the alt-right, They Live remains one of the most radical and unapologetically leftist films ever produced in the shade of Hollywood’s superstructure. In a world plagued by centrism and civility, They Live is still a much-needed reminder that debates don’t win revolutions. When literal Nazis are in the streets, appealing to both sides or “reaching across the aisle” is, to quote from the film, like pouring perfume on a pig.
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A conversation between Nadine Smith and Mike Thorn
Rob Zombie’s two films work together to form a very complex and thoughtful exegesis on American serial killer mythologies, with the first film primarily exploring social, familial and institutional systems while the sequel delves into the intricate and vexing connections between violence and un- (or sub) consciousness.
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Retro Review by Zach Dennis
Jaws 2 does neither and as a follow-up to Jaws feels out of its depths and floundering, but I’m not sure it ever had a chance to swim.
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Tony Todd and Michael Culkin star in director Bill Condon’s Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh
Review by Courtney Anderson
Candyman and Farewell to the Flesh both strike me as a movies that could’ve made for a fascinating interrogation of vengeance, racism, and historical erasure, but end up being a mangled White Savior™ stories where the villain is also the victim, one whose story is refurbished as a weapon against him.
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Anne Heche reprises Janet Leigh’s iconic role in director Gus Van Sant’s Psycho
Review by Reid Ramsey
Having set out to make a nearly shot-for-shot remake, Van Sant’s Psycho only barely strays from the original. That seems to be the purpose, though. In interviews he has talked endlessly about his desire to show Hollywood what a genuine remake is like.
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Chloë Grace Moretz stars as Carrie White in director Kimberly Peirce’s Carrie
Retro Review by Andrew Swafford
Kimberly Peirce’s remake of Carrie is a much kinder version of the story. It is a version that understands Carrie’s pain and one that goes out of its way to give every character a sense of humanity, softening the blow of the story’s cruelty while making its evils sharper in their recognizability. Does this make it a better film?
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Brian Peck and James Karen star in director Dan O’Bannons’s Return of the Living Dead
Retro Review by Nadine Smith
Nowhere is the evolution and mutation of the zombie and its corresponding genre more apparent than in Dan O’Bannon’s Return of the Living Dead (1985). Loosely adapted from a novel of the same name by John Russo, Romero’s co-writer on Night of the Living Dead, Return is a horror-comedy with an upfront awareness of the genre’s boundaries and peripheries.
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