A meal is never just a meal in a Luca Guadagnino movie; each bite is a prelude to a kiss, every feast a form of foreplay. In his shimmering melodrama “I Am Love” (2009), whose beauties range from the churches of Sanremo to the alabaster countenance of Tilda Swinton, the most ravishing image is a … Read more
Is it the end of the world if Kirsten Dunst isn’t around to witness it? I’m beginning to wonder. At the mystical aliens-among-us climax of Jeff Nichols’s “Midnight Special” (2016), it is Dunst, aglow with Spielbergian wonderment, who compels our surrender to the thrill of the unknown. In Lars von Trier’s end-of-days psychodrama, “Melancholia” (2011), … Read more
Imagine that you’re a bouncer in a scuzzy small-town bar where some of the world’s nastiest drunks go at one another with fists, knives, and broken beer bottles—and that’s on a good night. Forced to risk life and limb intervening in non-stop flareups of physical violence, what do you do? A better question: What would … Read more
