Email Author Mark Holcomb

2012 Stories by Mark Holcomb

• Behold the Pot of Gold that is Beyond the Black Rainbow

  published May 16, 2012

  Achieving something far weirder and more resonant than the genre pastiche it initially seems to reach for, Beyond the Black Rainbow... More >>

• Sleepless Night

  published May 9, 2012

  Ingeniously simple yet deceptively intricate, this French police thriller abounds in post–Woo/Tarantino action tropes: the usual... More >>

• The Road

  published May 9, 2012

  Tiny budgets work wonders on ghost movies—it's what's not shown that truly frightens, as any first-year film-school mook should know.... More >>

• Payback

  published April 25, 2012

  With its novel approach and wider-than-usual scope, this riff on Margaret Atwood's 2008 book-length essay, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side... More >>

• Citizen Gangster

  published April 25, 2012

  Gently mining unknown history—to U.S. audiences anyway—this smooth biopic of Canada's most notorious post–World War II bank... More >>

• The Myth of the Happy Hooker Debunked in Blunt and Beautiful Whores' Glory

  published April 25, 2012

  As with meat processing and politics, the day-to-day drama, tedium, and heartbreak of prostitution have little to do with our spoon-fed... More >>

• Jean Gentil

  published April 18, 2012

  Although it's steeped in tragedies both personal and cultural, this contemplative, gorgeously shot documentary-fiction hybrid from... More >>

• Morgan Spurlock Makes the Case for Comic-Con in A Fan's Hope

  published April 11, 2012

  Far from the nerd-in-a-barrel bloodbath it could have been, this documentary follow-along at the 2010 edition of San Diego's annual comics and... More >>

• My Mars Bar Movie

  published April 11, 2012

  "A lot is going on, as usual, at Mars Bar . . ." So pronounces Anthology godfather Jonas Mekas in his years-in-the-making video document of the... More >>

• The Assault

  published April 4, 2012

  Taut, forceful, ritualistic, and all those other flattering adjectives applied to thrillers that actually thrill, this skyjacking docudrama... More >>

• Intruders

  published March 28, 2012

  Spanish horror movies have carved out a distinctive niche over the past few years with a surprisingly effective alchemy of... More >>

• Scenes of a Crime

  published March 28, 2012

  A nonfiction corrective to decades of cop-friendly pop-culture conditioning, this rigorously focused documentary looks hard at... More >>

• Wrath of the Titans

  published March 28, 2012

  Like many a franchise-killer, this big, flailing dud of a sequel to 2010's Clash of the Titans is more (retina-herniating CGI), less... More >>

• Detachment

  published March 14, 2012

  Movies about teachers are flypaper for overblown armchair crusaderism, and this overbearingly cynical attempt gets my vote for worst offender... More >>

• Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

  published March 7, 2012

  The kind of benign, swooningly humanist crowd-pleaser Lasse Hallström (The Cider House Rules, Chocolat) could make in his... More >>

• Tim Riggins in Space: John Carter Can't Lose

  published March 7, 2012

  With expectations to match its obscenely huge budget (an estimated quarter of a billion dollars), this long-delayed adaptation of... More >>

• Better Than Something: Jay Reatard

  published February 29, 2012

  Like the longhair with the foghorn falsetto it's titled after, this unfussy rock-doc profile is shaggy, sophisticated, and more than a little... More >>

• How to Start a Revolution

  published February 22, 2012

  Soft-spoken Harvard poli-sci professor Gene Sharp is an unlikely mentor for the architects of the Arab Spring. But as first-time documentarian... More >>

• Thin Ice

  published February 15, 2012

  Working the long con and damn near getting away with it, this kissing cousin to Fargo, Cedar Rapids, and Win Win makes for... More >>

• The Forgotten Space

  published February 15, 2012

  Epic in scope, intellectual agility, and the potential to induce panic and despair, this documentary exploration of global trade as an emblem... More >>

• Windfall

  published February 1, 2012

  Extolling the virtues of wind power is where most ecological documentaries finish after subjecting us to the details of the land-raping... More >>

• Perfect Sense

  published February 1, 2012

  Satisfyingly ambiguous and starkly tactile in its inquiry into where sensation ends and identity begins, David Mackenzie's rampaging-virus... More >>

• Touring England, But Feeling OK About It, in "The Robinson Trilogy"

  published January 11, 2012

  Great cities inspire elaborate laments, and British avant-garde filmmaker Patrick Keiller might be the poet laureate of the form. His... More >>

• Norwegian Wood

  published January 4, 2012

  Like a rushed diner trying to sample everything in a sprawling multicourse meal, director-screenwriter Tran Anh Hung crams Haruki Murakami's... More >>