Film

YOU SO TOTALLY TROCK This drag  documentary has been winning   plaudits and awards this year. And well it should. Bobbi Jo Hart’s 90-minute exploration of the internationally-known drag ballet company, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo (affectionately known as The Trocks) is both a hoot and a revelation. Ms. Hart’s cinéma vérité documentary explores forty years…

JOHNNY-COME-LATELY Writer/Director Francis Lee has produced a fine timeless example of love’s rocky path in a contemporary setting. In the Northern part of England, the Laycock  area of Keighley  in West Yorkshire, we first meet early twentysomething Johnny Saxby (Josh O’Conner) vomiting into a toilet at his farm-home; apparently, one of many such retchings due to his…

PSYCHOSTYLE Writer/director Mickey Keating’s Psychopaths doesn’t have much of a plot. We don’t sympathize with the characters. There’s little drama, despite the dramatic subject matter’”torture, murder. Nobody changes. We don’t learn anything. There’s no arc. What there is is an abundance of style. Not disposable stylistics so often used by directors to mask a film’s…

AARDVARK  IS OK, AND SO IS AARDVARK In Brian Shoaf’s dramedy Aardvark, Josh (Zachary Quinto) engages Emily (Jenny Slate) to be his therapist, pays her in cash, and tells her that he has a brother named Craig who performs on a long-running TV show and is “one of the great talents of his generation.” Later, when…

MANY WILL BE WATCHING In Julia Solomonoff’s latest film Nobody’s Watching (Nadie Nos Mira), Nico (a sympathetic Guillermo Pfening), an Argentine soap star who yearns to do serious work, comes to New York to play in an independent film. But with the production continually getting delayed he’s forced to work odd jobs’”babysitter, waiter, apartment cleaner’”to…

SUPER DARK TIMES LOSES ITS WAY, BUT STAND BY DIRECTOR KEVIN PHILLIPS It’s the case nearly every time that if at the beginning of a movie a mistake is made, even one that seems trivial and is in and of itself completely forgivable, as the film progresses bigger and bigger flaws will reveal themselves until…

  OLD-SCHOOL OFFBEAT CRIME DRAMAS & YOU In the 1970s, “low-budget movie” was the umbrella term with which TV Guide covered products as disparate as John Cassavetes’ The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13. Gene Shalit and Rex Reed used a dozen adjectives between them for the entire New Hollywood…

VICTORY AND DEFEATISTS * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * [Editor’s Note:  Oeuvre Total is a film-discussion series. The first exchange concerns Billy Wilder, and our contributors are producer Michael Holland and critic Jason Rohrer. Stage and Cinema  republished the  original seven entries…

LA LA LAND  STARTS WITH OOH-LA-LA BUT LANDS HARD In some ways, La La Land  promises to be a moving, old-fashioned romantic musical  that plays around with old techniques and presents them in a vibrant, zestful fashion.  But some well-staged numbers and appealing actors don’t quite make up for forgettable songs, constrained storytelling, and two leads who aren’t terrific…