Todd Solondz’s new film, Wiener-Dog, is a collection of stories tied together by the presence of the titular cainine, who goes from owner to owner. Why the focus on the animal? The director says he accepts whatever interpretation or reaction viewers have about this or any of his films: he is just happy to have them seen. These are humble words from the creator of seven challenging feature films, narratives that are peppered with cringe-inducing moments of truth.  READ MORE . . . 

During Nicholas Winding Refn’s film The Neon Demon we spend a lot of time gazing at clean open spaces and emptily decadent LA streets. The latter are populated by beautiful models who, in turn, glare at one another. For these creatures of terminal self-regard, appearance is the essence of life. It is also the essence of a death cult that is rooted in a soulless obsession with beauty as success. An unfettered embrace of narcissism and style earn the willing membership in a cutthroat nihilist club, its acolytes cutting, altering, and embalming themselves in order to reach an imagined ideal that gives them an opportunity to be paraded out on the runway, or frozen forever in unsmiling portraits. Not one for subtlety, Refn has turned the dark side of modeling into a horror film, one that will no doubt generate plenty of controversy.
Elle Fanning is Jesse, a quiet, wide-eyed and innocent READ MORE . . . 

It feels as if a pairing of Jane Austen and Whit Stillman was inevitable. Both are wry social critics who specialize in careful observations of middle-to-upper-class life: Austen’s fiction dissects the snobbery of the Georgian era; Stillman’s comic films gently skewer the idealism of the budding American bourgeoisie. In Metropolitan, Barcelona, and The Last Days of Disco, the director genially undercuts the pomp and pretense of those exercising late 20th century privilege. His interest in our craving for attention, affirmation, status, and appearance dovetails well with Austen’s satiric dismemberment of a genteel but pitiless pecking-order. With his new film Love & Friendship, the director has . . .  READ MORE