‘Death of a Unicorn’ Substitutes Hot Splatter with Soft Satire
The satire in the Grand-Guignol fantasy Death of a Unicorn is not barbed enough to really skewer viewers with its point about greed.
dark comedy
David Lynch Nailed and Skewered Us
On the passing of legendary director David Lynch, we share five films that nailed us in our hearts and guts and skewered us to our soft, squishy, emotional cores.
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Dark Comedy ‘Patriot’ Illuminates Neoliberalism’s Dark Reality
The dark comedy Patriot illuminates how neoliberalism makes choices for us disguisedly, using entrepreneurial agency as a fig leaf to obscure manipulation.
‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ and the Death of Hollywood Franchises
Hollywood franchise films may not have started as theme parks, but the drive to eliminate risk will quickly turn them into the very thing their detractors fear.
‘Slow Horses: Season Four’ Subverts the Spy Genre
The good, the bad, and the ugly dance to Slow Horses‘ strange game, which reminds viewers that solidarity is essential to fighting oppression.
Yuppies, Punks and Sociopaths Congregate in Scorsese’s ‘After Hours’
In After Hours, Scorsese’s camera wanders through a tableau of living and breathing graffiti incarnated as ’80s New York City’s most dangerous bottom-feeders.
Acid Trips Meet Ancestral Trauma in ‘All-Night Pharmacy’
With the same shocking specificity that sets apart her poetry, Ruth Madievsky’s All-Night Pharmacy brings us uncomfortably close to everything the narrator witnesses in a hospital waiting room.
Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 2016: ‘The Master Cleanse’
Making a film about juice cleansing doesn’t seem like the deepest mine of material, does it?
‘Little Sister’ Keeps it All in the Family
Arguably a far more demented cousin of Cocteau’s Les Enfants Terribles, Little Sister manages an insightful revelation through the contentious moment of familial destruction.
‘The Farewell Party (Mita Tova)’ Has a Deliciously Twisted Sense of Humor
The humorous treatment of so-called "mercy killing" will certainly provoke some viewers.
The Funny Vignettes in ‘Wild Tales’ Are Rooted in Anger, Frustration, and Misery
The Argentinian anthology film Wild Tales is proof that the most compelling artists, in this case director Damián Szifron, channel their rage into their work.