-
A Family Affair
Reviews A Family Affair As mundane as its title, with characters whose…
-
The Good Half
Reviews The Good Half “Are you lost?,” an old lady at the…
-
The Fabulous Four
Reviews The Fabulous Four If you’re a distinguished older male actor in…
-
The Garfield Movie
Reviews The Garfield Movie I cannot think of a single reason for…
latest
-
Horror
A Quiet Place: Day One
Reviews A Quiet Place: Day One There are enough interesting ideas and at least two confident performances holding “A Quiet Place: Day One” together, even if it sometimes feels like a first draft of a richer, more complex final film. “Pig” director Michael Sarnoski proves deft at the kind of melancholic, subtle character beats usually lacking in these blockbusters. But he lacks the skill set for action, an essential aspect of a film like this: the setpieces feel too imprecise, and the stakes never high enough to produce actual tension. Still, what could have been a cash grab clearly has loftier aspirations,…
Read More » -
Drama
Sisi & I
Reviews Sisi & I Let’s get one obvious thing out of the way: Yes, it hasn’t been that long since we’ve had a feature film on the Empress Elisabeth of Austria, commonly known to public as Sisi. That film was Marie Kreutzer’s “Corsage” (2022), starring a stiff-lipped and often (aptly) unsmiling Vicky Krieps as the much-tormented 19th-Century royal. A woman who felt constrained not only by her tight corsets but also by the era’s restrictive attitudes towards her, Sisi had to keep at a certain weight despite her love of sweets (she sadly developed an eating disorder) and behave a…
Read More » -
Documentary
Eno
Reviews Eno Among other things, Brian Eno is a pioneer in what’s called “generative art.” His work in the field began when he was an art-rock star, playing in the band Roxy Music. While he made lots of skronky sounds on early synths with those fellas, his first instrument, as he says in this engaging documentary, was the reel-to-reel tape recorder. Futzing around with it, the ever-curious Eno came to understand you could do a lot more than just make recordings with it. He started ping-ponging the inputs and outputs of two side-by-side tape machines, which could create a long…
Read More » -
Comedy
A Family Affair
Reviews A Family Affair As mundane as its title, with characters whose color-by-numbers personalities and motivations shift randomly to fit a predictable storyline, “A Family Affair” is a low-wattage rom-com. As with last month’s streaming romance “The Idea of You,” this film features a gorgeous Oscar-winning actress as a middle-aged woman falling for a much younger superstar performer, with all the ensuing hijinks. “Paperboy” co-stars Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron play award-winning author Brooke Harwood and superhero franchise star Chris Cole, whose meet-cute is that Brooke’s 24-year-old daughter Zara (Joey King) is the movie star’s long-suffering personal assistant, on call…
Read More » -
Amazon Prime
Totally Killer
Reviews Totally Killer “Halloween” gets mashed up with “Back to the Future” in the totally cheeky and knowing “Totally Killer.” This tricky genre mix from director Nahnatchka Khan (“Always Be My Maybe,” “Fresh Off the Boat”) is a fish-out-of-water comedy filled with amusing one-liners combined with time-travel sci-fi that actually kinda makes sense. If anything, the horror element of this horror movie is the weakest part, but “Totally Killer” is spry enough to remain enjoyable throughout. That’s mostly because of the enormously engaging presence of Kiernan Shipka, who has a natural way with zippy dialogue and the dramatic chops to…
Read More » -
Action
Kalki 2898 – AD
Reviews Kalki 2898 – AD There’s nothing original or particularly surprising about “Kalki 2898 AD,” a polished and expensive-looking Telugu-language Indian science-fiction adventure. This big-budget fantasy, which grafts elements of “The Mahabharata” onto American sci-fi touchstones like “Star Wars” and “Mad Max,” brings to mind a few other recent Indian spectaculars, like “Brahmastra Part One: Shiva” and “Adipurush.” “Kalki 2898 AD” succeeds where most others have flailed simply by giving its dystopian countermyth a sense of proportion to match its gigundo scale. Goofy, over-earnest, and just good enough where it counts, “Kalki 2898 AD” outdistances its competition simply by digging…
Read More » -
Thriller
What You Wish For
Reviews What You Wish For The issue of the spoiler remains a critical one in cinematic discourse. At this moment, it weighs on this reviewer particularly heavily. “What You Wish For,” a picture written and directed by Nicholas Tomnay and starring Nick Stahl, is one that I went into relatively cold, and that contributed significantly to my enjoyment of the thriller that moves into horror territory (is that a spoiler already?). So, my intention here is to recommend the movie, which is anchored by a consistently understated performance by Stahl. While only in his mid-40s, his character here, Ryan, looks…
Read More » -
Suspense
The signpost is accurate
Reviews The signpost is accurate “Road to Nowhere” plays like an exercise in frustrating audiences. Imagine a jigsaw puzzle where you assemble as many pieces as seem to fit, but have gaps and pieces left over. One of the pleasures of puzzle films is that we understand, or at least sense, the underlying pattern of their solution. Here is a film that seems indifferent to that satisfaction. It marks the first film in 21 years by the cult legend Monte Hellman, whose “Two-Lane Blacktop” (1971) offers less determined frustrations. Clarity of narrative is unimportant in both films. They’re more about…
Read More » -
Science Fiction
The Kitchen
Reviews The Kitchen A directorial debut for both co-directors, Oscar-winning actor Daniel Kaluuya and Kibwe Tavares, “The Kitchen” is a tale set in a near-future dystopian London. Tackling the inaccessibility of affordable housing while turning the volume up to eleven, “The Kitchen” almost reads like a damning premonition of what’s to come as the gap between rich and poor widens to even more damning degrees. Izi (Kane Robinson) lives in the Kitchen, a take on a futuristic housing project that has truly become a world of its own, like a mutated stack of buildings reminiscent of Hong Kong’s former Kowloon Walled City.…
Read More » -
Romance
Jeanne du Barry
Reviews Jeanne du Barry In 1761, a 24-year-old penniless woman named Jeanne Bécu wrote a letter to a “dear friend,” telling him she loved him before getting to the point: “I don’t want to remain a shopgirl, but a little more my own mistress, and would therefore like to find someone to keep me.” She makes her pitch: “It will not cost you anymore rent … To keep me and my headdress will be the only expense, and for those give me one hundred livres a month.” The unknown man did not take her up on it, but the letter…
Read More » -
Mystery
Apples Never Fall
Reviews Apples Never Fall There are a lot of missing and dead women on TV. It’s not just zombie shows or procedurals, the prestige series has long been in on the game with feminine corpses powering entire series. In Peacock’s missing-woman mystery, “Apples Never Fall,” the beloved and powerful Annette Bening even potentially dons the trope. As Joy Delaney, she’s the matriarch of a competitive tennis family with four adult children—none of whom went pro, much to the patriarch’s dismay. When she goes missing, the siblings confront a mix of explicit and implicit intergenerational trauma, grappling with the possibility that…
Read More » -
Horror
The Devil’s Bath
Reviews The Devil’s Bath When does rooting for the damned stop being worthwhile or even productive? Viewers’ sympathies are worked over throughout the grim Austrian folk horror drama “The Devil’s Bath,” a dreadful period piece about a pious woman who seems doomed by her circumstances. Agnes (Anja Plaschg), an unhappily married woman who prays to God for mercy, makes more sense as a product of her time and setting, as they’re understood by myopic present-tense filmmakers. Agnes’s intensity can be endearing given Plaschg’s expressive performance, as well as Martin Gschlacht’s painterly cinematography, under the direction of co-writer/helmer duo Severin Fiala…
Read More » -
Drama
Touch
Reviews Touch “Touch,” from Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur, is vast in scope, stretching over decades, languages, continents, and cultures, with themes of memory, aging, loss, and love. But its sensibility is as exquisitely tender as the flutter of a butterfly wing. Kristófer (Egill Ólafsson) is an elderly widower and restaurant owner in Iceland who visits his doctor to talk about some diminishing of his memory and fine motor skills. The doctor orders an MRI and gently suggests that this might be a time for Kristófer to consider any unfinished business or any unresolved issues he may wish to address while…
Read More » -
Documentary
Made in England: The Films of Powell & Pressburger
Reviews Made in England: The Films of Powell & Pressburger At the beginning of “Made in England: The Films of Powell & Pressburger,” Martin Scorsese recounts how he first encountered the works of the legendary filmmaking duo of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger as a child under perhaps the worst conditions imaginable — on his family’s black-and-white television in substandard and edited prints that made hash of their visual elements. Even so, he found himself struck by the unique visions that saw them rise to the top of the British film industry, which managed to still ring true despite the reduced…
Read More » -
Comedy
Fly Me to the Moon
Reviews Fly Me to the Moon “Fly Me to the Moon” lurches wildly from zippy, retro rom-com to cynical political satire to weighty, remorseful drama and back again. Tonally messy and overlong, director Greg Berlanti’s film ultimately squanders the considerable charms of its A-list stars, Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, who are individually appealing but have zero chemistry with each other. Johansson is especially charismatic here as Kelly Jones, a late-’60s ad executive who gets plucked from a Manhattan agency to sell the space program to the American people. She’s Don Draper in a pink pencil skirt – and all hail costume designer Mary Zophres, the longtime Coen brothers’ collaborator, who has amassed a truly dazzling array of mid-century chic ensembles for these actors to wear. The shadowy government figure who approaches Kelly in a bar about…
Read More » -
Amazon Prime
Candy Cane Lane
Reviews Candy Cane Lane Every year during the holiday season residents of Southern California flock to East Acacia Avenue in El Segundo, affectionately known as Candy Cane Lane, to see the neighborhood’s elaborate decked out halls, a tradition that dates back to 1949. This of course makes the perfect setting for a manic Christmas film about neighborly competition. However, “Candy Cane Lane,” the new Eddie Murphy Christmas film from director Reginald Hudlin and writer Kelly Younger takes the Christmas magic one step further, crafting a film that at times has more in common with Grimm’s Fairy Tales than it does…
Read More » -
Action
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F
Reviews Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F Not that long ago, a legacy sequel like “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” would have made a fortune at the box office over the Fourth of July weekend. But times have changed, and the long-awaited fourth film in the Eddie Murphy series is dropping on Netflix instead of in the multiplex. While streaming services sequels usually mean the death of quality control, “Axel F” is a shockingly entertaining diversion, the best in the series since the film that helped make Murphy one of the biggest stars of his generation. Legacy sequels are often cheap…
Read More » -
Thriller
Lumberjack the Monster
Reviews Lumberjack the Monster It’s incredible that a filmmaker as renowned as Takashi Miike can have a film stealth drop on Netflix. But that’s what happens when you make as many flicks as the director of “Audition,” “13 Assassins,” and “Ichi the Killer” has helmed over his illustrious career. Seriously, there’s a very strong chance he’s on a set right now, having accumulated over 100 directorial credits as of this writing. However, Miike is more than a “stat compiler”; he’s an ace craftsman who rarely phones it in, elevating a truly clunky project like “Lumberjack the Monster” into something better…
Read More » -
Suspense
Long night’s journey into collapse
Reviews Long night’s journey into collapse Kevin Spacey in “Margin Call.” It may have happened something like this. “Margin Call” depicts the last night of good times on Wall Street, as a deadly certainty travels up the executive ladder at an investment firm: Disastrous speculation in the mortgage markets is leading to the firm’s collapse. We can still recall those days in the summer of 2008, during the Obama-McCain campaign, when America seemed awash in prosperity, and the stock market was setting records. Then one firm after another was forced to declare bankruptcy, the nation’s economic structure was threatened, and…
Read More » -
Science Fiction
Spaceman
Reviews Spaceman Now, 189 days into his mission, Jakub Prochazka (Adam Sandler), the forlorn cosmonaut protagonist of “Spaceman,” is hurtling toward Jupiter to study the mysterious Chopra cloud. He is nearing his breaking point. Short on sleep in a malfunctioning spacecraft that has seen better days, what’s really occupying his mind isn’t the mission at hand — it’s the radio silence by his pregnant wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan). Despite efforts by his physician Peter (Kunal Nayyar) and Commissioner Tuma (an under-used Isabella Rossellini) at Mission Control to calm his fears, Jakub knows something is wrong. When a giant primordial spider…
Read More » -
Romance
Slow
Reviews Slow If I were to explain to you the setup of Marisa Kavtaradze’s “Slow,” my guess is that it would lead many of you to more or less assume most of what is to follow. However, one of the many nice things about the film, which was Lithuania’s Oscar submission for this year’s International Feature Film category, is that it avoids those expectations, more interested in exploring the real issues and emotions inspired by the premise than falling prey to the usual formulas. The result is a quietly affecting work, one of the more engaging romantic dramas to come…
Read More » -
Mystery
The Animal Kingdom
Reviews The Animal Kingdom Another day, another traffic jam. A father, François (Romain Duris), chides his son Émile (Paul Kircher) for feeding the family dog potato chips. He tells his son to stay away from them as well since they’re probably not very good for him, and Émile rolls his eyes as any 16-years-old would. They argue. Émile gets out of their car in defiance since the traffic is at a standstill. Suddenly, an ambulance stuck in the opposite lane of traffic starts to wobble and out bursts a bird-like man. He escapes, and the son and the father run…
Read More » -
Horror
The Last Breath
Reviews The Last Breath Sharks, while undeniably lethal, are also, studies have shown, kind of dumb. And “The Last Breath” is a cheesy new thriller that is even dumber than a real shark. Not that it features any real sharks — the predatory creatures here are CGI, and hilariously enough, they move through the water faster than the “rage virus” zombies of “28 Days Later” roam over land. They don’t show up until about halfway through the Joachim Heder-directed movie, which begins during World War II, and the shelling of a ship that results in a wreck that’s apparently legendary in…
Read More » -
Drama
Crossing
Reviews Crossing “Istanbul is a place…where people come to disappear.” This is the sad conclusion arrived at by late in this moving film by one of its principal characters, Lia, a stern-faced older woman who has crossed over into the Turkish capital from the Black Sea’s Batumi, a desolate-looking spot in Georgia. A retired school teacher, she has left her home after making a promise to her now-dead sister. The promise was to find that woman’s child, who’s living in Turkey. All Lia has to go on is a name, and the fact that the now-adult child is transgender. The…
Read More » -
Documentary
Skywalkers: A Love Story
Reviews Skywalkers: A Love Story In the mode (but not the spirit) of documentaries like “Man on Wire,” “Free Solo,” and “Fire of Love,” “Skywalkers: A Love Story” is less about persistence, curiosity, and daring than it is about two careless adrenaline junkies taking ridiculous risks to get likes on social media. As the title indicates, writer Jeff Zimbalist wants to think of this as a romance about people who happen to climb to the top of tall buildings so they can post pictures on Instagram. His script makes the point over and over that it’s all a symbol of…
Read More » -
Comedy
Mother, Couch
Reviews Mother, Couch From the moment Dave (Ewan McGregor) frantically walks across a deserted parking lot, “Mother, Couch” feels empty. Dressed in a black suit, Dave walks toward a furniture store filled with vintage, handcrafted pieces. At the front desk is the bubbly Bella (Taylor Russell), whose father Marcus and Uncle Marco (both played by F Murray Abraham) are away. There Dave’s mother (Ellen Burstyn) is sitting on a green couch—it has deep, personal significance—and refuses to leave. Dave’s brother Gruffudd (Rhys Ifans) is there too, and soon their sister Linda (Lara Flynn Boyle) will arrive to try to coax…
Read More » -
Amazon Prime
Frida
Reviews Frida From the sides of tall buildings to tote bags and earrings, the likeness of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo can be found just about anywhere, so much so that she’s often recognized by just her first name. She is one of the most recognizable painters today, not just of her generation or in Mexican Modernism, but in the history of art. Her story and images are a source of inspiration and intrigue, inviting countless interpretations and riffs, from kitschy umbrellas and dolls sold in art museums gift shops to Julie Taymor’s 2002 drama, “Frida.” I’ve covered two exhibits on…
Read More » -
Action
Kill
Reviews Kill A movie theater would probably be the best place to see “Kill,” a bloody Hindi-language Indian beat-em-up set on a train to New Delhi. The movie features a handful of visually dynamic fight scenes, choreographed by action directors Se-yeong Oh and Parvez Sheikh (“Fighter,” “War”), directed by Nikhil Nagesh Bhat, and shot by cinematographer Rafey Mehmood. “Kill” also features a threadbare plot and a few too many lulls between action scenes, so you might need to be seated before and focused on a big screen to see it at its best. Thankfully, these blemishes aren’t so significant as…
Read More » -
Thriller
A Sacrifice
Reviews A Sacrifice The first two-thirds of “A Sacrifice” are a largely leaden affair that offers viewers little that they haven’t seen before. It isn’t even awful so much as it is intensely forgettable—the kind of film whose title eludes you even as you watch it. Unfortunately, it then proceeds to get infinitely worse in its final act as it shifts from tediousness to outright lunacy with a series of plot developments that will frustrate and irritate anyone who has put any sort of investment in the goings-on of the narrative, though I suspect that there will be very few…
Read More » -
Suspense
The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears
Reviews The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears Characterizing Belgian co-directors/writers Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s style is tricky since they’ve only made two features to date. Both “Amer” and “The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears” are visually overpowering homages to Italian gialli from the ’60s and ’70s, seedy crime/detective stories with a focus on psychological realism and sexual perversion. Cattet and Forzani’s gialli feel more abstract than films by masters like Mario Bava, Dario Argento, and Sergio Martino in that their films are not narrative-centric. “The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears,” a mystery about a deranged man’s…
Read More »