Film
Everyone has something to say about Wuthering Heights
4 OBSCURAE contributors, new and old, chime in on Fennell's third Feature.
Michel Abdulaziz
Michel Abdulaziz is a reviewer and film journalist with interest in the intersection between film and culture and all the politics therein.
Film
The Bloody Social Politics of Send Help
Send Help moves at a lightning pace in setting the stage, gnarly, disgusting, with all our favorite practical effects and Raimi-isms to make the blood rush to our ears. And without the costume of modern society, the movie illustrates how much capitalism is a pantomime none of us asked to be part of.
Film
The Baltimorons: Love is One Dental Cavity Away
The Baltimorons is a fresh film, maybe the first improv based film that’s actually good, and it wields a startling emphasis on character conflict behind the public affairs of its loser leads.
Film
Pools: Floatation Device Not Included
There's something real here under its boozy convos between gasps of air, in being lost inside a shame spiral, but when it comes to exploring it? Not as such; these characters gesture at depth, but Pools has little to give besides what it can tease out of its performances.
Film
Lurker: They Long To Be (Close To You)
The ambiguity the film leads with is a provocation, with a point; it's a freaky decomposition of not the business or psychosis of fame, but the spirit of its artistry, the chase, the race. Lurker is star-screwer cinema, BRAT but red, a dark oblivion of content creatives and their very many vices.
Reviews
Together: U + Me = Us
Michael Shanks’s first feature is one wicked spitfire of a horror film, and if its metaphors seem heavy-handed, it has the decency at least to deliver them in the nastiest package possible.
Film
Jurassic World: Rebirth is Pure Popcorn Fun
There'll never be another Jurassic Park, the film too strong, too sharply drawn to recapture. So maybe we shouldn't try. Rebirth is in that register; beautifully shot, exciting, and understanding of the appeal of a silly diversion without much thought behind it.
Film
🇺🇸Materialists is All About Love, But Less Than The Sum of its Parts
Good cinematography can obscure bad writing, and I'm not really sold on what Materialists is selling about us. The film has charm and disarms in funny little interludes, yet it's disinterested in anything besides the aesthetic.
Film
OH, HI! | OBSCURAE at TriBeCa
Tied Up Tight and Toxic, OH, HI! is a Heartstruck Misery for the Situationship Generation.
Festivals
Ride Or Die | OBSCURAE at TriBeCa
With Ride Or Die, Josalynn Smith transfuses grungy 90s dissatisfaction into the chassis of a beautifully shot modern feature, painted red, peeling to blue, then blossoming to a pale lilac.
Film
Fior Di Latte | OBSCURAE at TriBeCa
Fior Di Latte punctures wacky with doses of real, and Charlotte Ercoli uses the madness like an easel to paint a woefully accurate portrait of addiction.
Film
Twinless | OBSCURAE at TriBeCa
Twinless is slightly sorta like Vertigo, on poppers, running on the energy of an off the walls 2000s movie laced with the spirit of a Hitchcockian thriller.