Alan Zilberman

2 weeks ago | spectrumculture.com | Alan Zilberman

Most dinner parties are not stressful, and yet you would never know that by watching movies set during them. The dynamics between the hosts and guests are always fraught, with ugly secrets or resentments bubbling to the surface. It is impossible to forget the battle of wills between George and Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and you can see echoes of that dynamic in Black Bag, a recent spy thriller bookended by two surprisingly intense dinner parties.

2 weeks ago | spectrumculture.com | Alan Zilberman

It has been nearly nine years since The Accountant, a middling action thriller starring Ben Affleck as a deadly assassin with autism. So much has happened since then, including evolving public perception toward autism, that the arrival of the sequel The Accountant 2 is curious or maybe ill-advised. Why do we need to see more of Affleck’s character, a cross between John Wick and Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, when the original film already humanized its deadly hero?

3 weeks ago | spectrumculture.com | Alan Zilberman

The great artists who steal have the wherewithal to obscure their influences or at least tweak them slightly. Sinners, another horror film that opened this week, must list From Dusk Till Dawn as a clear inspiration, since both mix a vampire with a Rio Bravo-style siege picture. The influence is not overt, although it is hiding in plain sight, so Sinners rewards viewers who have a knowledge of film history and a talent for pattern recognition.

1 month ago | spectrumculture.com | Alan Zilberman

When Alex Garland ended Civil War with a dramatic siege of the White House, he relied on Ray Mendoza to get a sense of how the actors portraying it should move. He stepped back, and let the choreography dictate where he would place the camera. Mendoza is a decorated veteran who works as a Hollywood consultant, and his work heightened Garland’s authenticity. That same sense of collaboration and trust informs Warfare, a new combat film where Mendoza now serves as co-director with Garland.

1 month ago | spectrumculture.com | Alan Zilberman

In Quiz Show, Martin Scorsese plays a shrewd television executive who understands the appeal of game shows. He explains, “You see, the audience didn’t tune in to watch some amazing display of intellectual ability. They just wanted to watch the money.” That insight is central to The Luckiest Man in America, another docudrama about an ordinary man who was the wrong kind of game show contestant.