Derek Smith

Los Angeles

Film Critic at Slant Magazine

Film & Blu-ray reviews @Slant_Magazine

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Articles

'In the Heat of the Night' Criterion 4K UHD Blu-ray Review

1 week ago | slantmagazine.com | Derek Smith

Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) doesn’t bother asking for acceptance or respect from white people. He unequivocally demands it. Unlike Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night is under no delusions that racial prejudice can be corrected merely by white people coming into proximity with intelligent, successful people of color, particularly in a small town like Sparta, Mississippi.
'Girl with a Suitcase' Blu-ray Review: Radiance Films

1 week ago | slantmagazine.com | Derek Smith

In the first half of Girl with a Suitcase, 16-year-old Lorenzo (Jacques Perrin) looks after the showgirl, Aida (Claudia Cardinale), whom his older brother, Marcello (Corrado Pani), promised to help before cruelly and casually ditching her during a road trip.
More Laughs, Less Number-Crunching

3 weeks ago | slantmagazine.com | Derek Smith

Gavin O’Connor’s 2016 film The Accountant is by and large memorable for the pairing of Ben Affleck’s autistic accountant-slash-assassin Christian Wolff and Anna Kendrick’s exuberant number cruncher Dana. Their rapport is charming, with Christian’s innate bluntness amusingly clashing with Dana’s anxious people-pleasing instincts.
Three Pulp Thrillers by Alain Corneau' Blu-ray Review

1 month ago | slantmagazine.com | Derek Smith

Each of the films collected in Hardboiled: Three Pulp Thrillers by Alain Corneau emphasize the possibilities and discrepancies between reality as it is and as the protagonists see it or want it to be. Like so many leads in noirs and neo-noirs alike, these men are plagued by big, unattainable dreams and are left grasping at any hope or freedom they can find, only to be inevitably confronted by the harsh truth that everything good is fleeting.
A Sneaky Tale of Family Strife

1 month ago | slantmagazine.com | Derek Smith

For a spell, François Ozon’s When Fall Is Coming plays like the type of low-key drama that aims more to comfort viewers than challenge them. Set primarily in a small village in the French countryside, the film treats us to plenty of pretty, bucolic shots of its elderly protagonist, Michelle (Hélène Vincent), going for walks in the woods with her best friend, Marie-Claude (Josiane Balasko), picking mushrooms, and preparing meals.
Revenge Served Dead Behind the Eyes

1 month ago | slantmagazine.com | Derek Smith

Jason Statham’s Levon Cade isn’t just a simple “working man.” Sure, he’s putting in the sweat equity as a foreman at his friend Joe’s (Michael Peña) construction company, but it’s not long into David Ayer’s film before we learn of his past as a highly trained and decorated member of the British military.
'Zerograd' Blu-ray Review: Deaf Crocodile

2 months ago | slantmagazine.com | Derek Smith

Released the year before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Karen Shakhnazarov’s absurdist satire Zerograd captures the disorientation and terror of gradually coming to realize that you live in a reality you no longer recognize. Arriving in a remote city in order to get a replacement for his company’s dysfunctional air conditioning unit, ordinary worker Alexei (Leonid Filatov) expects a short, uneventful visit before returning to Moscow.
'Prague Nights' Blu-ray Review: Deaf Crocodile

2 months ago | slantmagazine.com | Derek Smith

The 1969 Czech anthology film Prague Nights consists of a trio of tales of lust, revenge, and feminine wiles, each infused with a singular combination of the macabre, the grotesque, and the comically sensual in depicting some of the darkest and most mysterious aspects of Czech culture.
The Criterion Collection

2 months ago | slantmagazine.com | Derek Smith |Derek Smith

A careful balancing act between character study and romantic comedy, Joan Micklin Silver’s 1988 film Crossing Delancey strikes a beguilingly effervescent tone in spite of its main character, Izzy (Amy Irving), being so prickly and intransigent. This can largely be attributed to Silver and screenwriter Susan Sandler’s willingness to depict Izzy as a woman who lives life on her own terms, discovering herself as she discovers her power.
'The Cat' Blu-ray Review: Radiance Films

2 months ago | slantmagazine.com | Derek Smith

The elaborate heist that kicks into motion early into Dominik Graf’s The Cat effectively douses the steamy sex scene that opens the film with ice cold water. As the well-tanned, brawny Probek (Götz George) stands naked at the window of the low-lit hotel room in which he’s just gotten his rocks off, and from where he’ll orchestrate much of his exacting plan, one can’t help but think of the antiheroes in Michael Mann’s crime films.