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Mother of the Bride
Reviews Mother of the Bride Over the last few years, there has…
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Fly Me to the Moon
Reviews Fly Me to the Moon “Fly Me to the Moon” lurches…
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If
Reviews If If you’re lucky enough to attend an early screening of…
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Terrestrial Verses
Reviews Terrestrial Verses “Terrestrial Verses,” one of the most brilliant and provocative…
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Science Fiction
Dune: Part Two
Reviews Dune: Part Two The word that will likely be used most often to describe Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Two” is “massive.” Expect a whole lot of variations on the words “epic” and “spectacle” too. Whatever big words you apply to the result, Villeneuve undeniably did not approach Frank Herbert’s beloved sci-fi novel with modest aspirations, and it’s his ambition, along with the top tier of behind-the-scenes craftspeople with whom he collaborated, that have paid off in this superior follow-up to the Oscar-winning 2021 film. While that beloved blockbuster often felt like half a film, “Dune: Part Two” locates significantly…
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Romance
Turtles All the Way Down
Reviews Turtles All the Way Down In middle school, John Green novels were the quintessential YA diaries in which my friends and I indulged. Ferociously consuming his books and feeding our angst and inflated otherness through Margo Roth Spiegelman and Alaska Young, or pining for the love of Hazel and Augustus, the announcement of an adaptation sent us straight to theaters to see our literary parasocial relationships on the big screen. “Turtles All the Way Down” is the newest page-to-screen translation of a John Green tale, directed by Hannah Marks and scripted by two “Love, Simon” co-writers Elizabeth Berger and…
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Mystery
Limbo
Reviews Limbo The Australian actor Simon Baker has spent a good portion of his career in Hollywood, in amiable lead roles on television and mostly amiable second leads in film. He often sports a slightly unruly mop of sandy hair, which helps put across the aforementioned amiability. The now 54-year-old performer has very short-cropped hair in “Limbo,” the new Australian film written, directed, shot, edited and more by Ivan Sen, and he is not shy about letting Sen’s camera, recording in exceptionally sharp black and white, pick up every crease and wrinkle on his tanned face. His acting here, understated,…
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Horror
MaXXXine
Reviews MaXXXine Mia Goth and Ti West took the world of arthouse horror by storm in 2022 with the one-two punch of “X” and “Pearl,” distinct and original films within a bold, new cinematic universe. “X” was a grisly homage to ‘70s slasher flicks, while the prequel, “Pearl,” was the duo’s twisted take on the Technicolor of Douglas Sirk. Both were rich in style and narrative verve, with a thrillingly unhinged Goth at the center, playing multiple parts. Now, we have the third part in the trilogy, “MaXXXine,” and it’s a crushing disappointment. The style remains firmly in place –…
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Drama
Great Absence
Reviews Great Absence Kei Chika-ura’s “Great Absence” is obviously a personal piece, the kind of drama in which one can sense a connection to the subject matter in the subtlety with which it’s handled. Anyone who has dealt with the deterioration of a parent will find something resonant in Chika-ura’s film, one that can sometimes feel self-indulgent in its pacing and length but never loses its nuance, thanks both to its refined direction and a truly stellar performance from the legendary Tatsuya Fuji. The iconic star of “In the Realm of the Senses” won an acting award at San Sebastian…
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Documentary
Sorry/Not Sorry
Reviews Sorry/Not Sorry Produced by The New York Times‘s video division, and depending heavily on its own reporting, “Sorry/Not Sorry” is a primer on the rise, fall and reinvention of Louis C.K. A respected standup comic who remade himself as a low-budget arthouse confessional filmmaker, he became the writer, director, producer and lead actor of the semi-autobiographical FX series “Louie,” about a divorced single father who was also a standup comic. At the show’s peak of popularity, C.K. was hailed as being the kind of earthy New York intellectual entertainer that Woody Allen’s fans used to unabashedly enjoy, before his luster was tarnished by scandal. Although the…
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Comedy
The Nature of Love
Reviews The Nature of Love Writer-director Monia Chokri’s “The Nature of Love,” is a two-hour foray into longing, self-searching, and passion. Sophia (a magnetic Magalie Lépine Blondeau), is a philosophy professor who is stably, but stagnantly in-like with her wealthy partner of 10 years, Xavier (Francis-William Rhéaume). When they decide to rehab their old summer chateau, Sophie goes to meet the contractor, Sylvain (a charismatic, sultry Pierre-Yves Cardinal), and finds the sooty wick of her desire reignited. The two strike up a feverish, insatiable love affair that leaves Sophia second guessing the principles of love and comfort, and excitedly toeing…
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Amazon Prime
Expats
Reviews Expats “People like me…. Are they ever forgiven?” Much like writer-director Lulu Wang’s deeply personal feature debut, “The Farewell,” her follow-up for Prime Video, “Expats,” grapples with the intersection of grief, womanhood, and geographic displacement—what it’s like to feel loss so far away from home. This time, it’s in the form of a sprawling, gargantuan series that spans six episodes and six and a half hours of weeping, unrelenting grief. It’s a powerful but harrowing watch, an exercise in prestige-drama misery that’s best absorbed in small doses. Set in a small community of affluent expats living in Hong Kong…
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Action
Despicable Me 4
Reviews Despicable Me 4 “Despicable Me 4” won’t win any prizes, but if you like this kind of thing, you’ll like this thing. I laughed. The dumber and more random the jokes, the harder I laughed. The kids I saw it with laughed harder. Often what’s onscreen is humor no more sophisticated than a young father goofing around while putting a sock on his son’s foot, pretending to miss it over and over and yelling “Whoops!” each time. Gru, the reformed bad guy turned bad-guy-battler who was introduced in the 2010 original, is a try-hard dad-as-amateur-entertainer, muttering nervous inanities even when no actual children (or childlike minions) are…
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Thriller
Escape
Reviews Escape The high-concept South Korean army thriller “Escape” clocks in at a swift 94 minutes long. It could have easily gone on longer. There’s simultaneously too much and not enough action in this intriguing, but underdeveloped story about a North Korean defector who, after ten years of military service, flees to South Korea. He’s pursued by an obsessed North Korean National Security officer, who provides some tension. Contextualizing flashbacks also add something to this otherwise straightforward chase narrative, even if those tangential asides stall dramatic momentum long enough to make one wonder why there’s either not much more or…
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Suspense
Open Windows
Reviews Open Windows Open Windows Heavily inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s influence on Brian De Palma, Nacho Vigalondo’s “Open Windows” goes from crazy to Crazy to CRAZY, but maintains enough energy and cultural currency to keep the entertainment value high. It’s one of those admittedly silly films that moves so quickly that one rarely has time to question its logic. Consider that a piece of advice. If you think about any of the dozen or so twists in “Open Windows” for even a few seconds, the entire exercise falls apart. However, there’s enough filmmaking skill and an enticing melting pot of…
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Science Fiction
Megamind vs. the Doom Syndicate
Reviews Megamind vs. the Doom Syndicate The original “Megamind,” released in 2010, was a fresh, funny, and heartwarming animated film with wildly imaginative visuals and A-list voice talent, including Will Farrell, Tina Fey, Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, and David Cross. Fourteen years later, this new straight-to-streaming flick is not fresh, with derivative visuals and mostly nondescript voice talent. It is intermittently funny and briefly heartwarming, as though they ran the original through the washing machine a few times, and then faxed it. Its primary purpose is to serve as an infomercial for a new streaming series: “Megamind Rules” comes to…
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Romance
Solo
Reviews Solo Under the glare of fuschia neon lights Simon (Théodore Pellerin) is twirling. ABBA’s “Voulez-Vous” is blaring, and a perfectly placed fan is blowing his blonde wig around in all the right ways. He is the center of the universe, and no one can convince him, or us, otherwise. “Solo,” the third directorial effort from Sophie Dupuis (as well as her third project working with Pellerin), is all about performance: the shows we put on for entertainment and the ones we mount for self-preservation. “Solo” is centered in Montreal’s drag scene, and Simon, a makeup artist by day, is…
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Mystery
Sleeping Dogs
Reviews Sleeping Dogs The Russell Crowe renaissance feels like it’s just around the corner. Although I’ve been saying that since “The Nice Guys,” so I could be wrong. He’s undeniably reached a phase of his career in which he has nothing left to prove, and he’s often the best thing about every project he’s in. (He made “The Pope’s Exorcist” so much better than it would have been with anyone else in that part, and I kinda hope they make five more.) It really just comes down to the right filmmaker having faith in his natural ability. This is the reason I…
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Horror
Longlegs
Reviews Longlegs Everything about Osgood Perkins’ “Longlegs” is designed to rattle you, unsettle you, and make you think about it hours or even days later. It’s a very purposefully exaggerated film, from the oppressive sound design to the heavily mannered performances, going for something closer to a cinematic nightmare than anything approaching realism. To that end, despite obvious narrative influences, comparisons to Jonathan Demme’s “The Silence of the Lambs” feel a bit off. Sure, there’s a female FBI agent and a serial killer, but Perkins is seeking something different tonally. It’s basically like watching the scene where Clarice hunts around…
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Drama
Lady in the Lake
Reviews Lady in the Lake Within the first two minutes of Apple TV+’s “Lady in the Lake,” we learn that one of the series protagonists is dead. We watch as Cleopatra “Cleo” Johnson (Moses Ingram) is flung from the shoulders of an unnamed man into a lake, until her body disappears beneath the murky waters. Throughout her death, her monologue, done through voiceover, makes it apparent that while she may be dead, Cleo will haunt the narrative, and the people who had a hand in her demise. She directs this monologue to one character in particular: the series’ other protagonist,…
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Documentary
Hollywoodgate
Reviews Hollywoodgate When the United States withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021, you couldn’t avoid the international coverage of the chaos around that major event, one that ceded control of the country back to the Taliban. When the final plane had left and the journalists returned to their home countries, the story didn’t end. And that’s where Ibrahim Nash’at entered the picture, traveling to Kabul to document the transition of the Taliban from a militia to a regime. His film “Hollywoodgate” rarely leaves the former American base that gives it a title, showing both the mundanity of life on the…
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Comedy
Crumb Catcher
Reviews Crumb Catcher I didn’t believe a single second of “Crumb Catcher.” It begins with a nauseating blitz of woozy frames: Shane (Rigo Garay) and Leah (Ella Rae Peck) are taking post-wedding photos, holding each other arm-in-arm in a stilted, forced manner. They relate to the photographer the different versions of how they met. Shane is an author, Leah works for him. No, actually. Leah works at a publishing house that represents Shane, who is nearing the release of an autobiographical book. They met at an office party where Leah was perturbed and impressed by Shane dancing with the office’s…
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Amazon Prime
This is Me … Now: A Love Story
Reviews This is Me … Now: A Love Story Fairy tale music swells as an ornate storybook fills the screen. “Have you ever heard the story of Alida and Taroo?,” asks star Jennifer Lopez with a compelling earnestness. The storybook’s illustrations come to life as Lopez proceeds to narrate the Puerto Rican myth about star-crossed lovers from warring tribes who are transformed by the gods into a red flower and blue hummingbird. Lopez, who wrote and conceived “This Is Me … Now: A Love Story” a companion film to her first album in a decade (also called This Is Me…
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Action
Twisters
Reviews Twisters Aren’t movies of this summer spinning delightfully vintage vibes? Just collectively consider “Mad Max” offshoot “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” seeing Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills again through “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F,” Kevin Costner’s shrewdly old-school Western “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1,” the classical inspirational appeal of “Young Woman and The Sea,” the screwball-adjacent magnetism of “Hit Man” and you’ll get the flavor. Lifted up significantly by Glen Powell’s unique charms like that last title—pick any combination of a lovable geek, a handsome heartthrob, a dependable boy-next-door—Lee Isaac Chung’s thunderous legacy-sequel “Twisters” is joining the nostalgic lot this…
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Thriller
The Girl in the Pool
Reviews The Girl in the Pool The suburbs are hell. That’s what the movies keep telling us. Perfect nuclear families living in their McMansions are often anything but perfect. It’s not exactly new cinematic territory, but it’s a well that gets tapped often because it’s just a lot of fun to watch rich families implode, often of their own doing. In that vein, the new suburban-set thriller “The Girl in the Pool,” from director Dakota Gorman and screenwriter Jackson Reid Williams, breaks no new ground. But with its many twists and turns, it is indeed a lot of fun. One-time…
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Suspense
Pioneer
Reviews Pioneer Pioneer Remember this name: Aksel Hennie. If “Pioneer,” a mixed bag of a conspiracy thriller, works at all, it largely does so because of him. Hennie, now into his second decade as an actor in Norwegian film (he’s also written and directed a feature) gives a spectacular performance as Petter, a deep-sea diver on an oil rig who becomes something of a scapegoat after a mishap that takes the life of his brother and leaves him searching for truth. At the movie’s opening, Petter and brother Knut are all diving bravado. Working with a team that includes some…
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Science Fiction
Arcadian
Reviews Arcadian For a few minutes, “Arcadian” basically becomes “Aliens” on an Irish farm with Nicolas Cage in the Ripley role. That might be the best elevator pitch I’ve ever heard. You know if you want to sign up for that or not. Don’t get me wrong. This is not James Cameron-level filmmaking, but it is an effective creature feature that avoids a lot of the traps of post-apocalyptic horror (which has really been a thing lately, especially at this year’s SXSW) and delivers on its premise. It truly feels like “The Walking Dead” and now maybe “The Last of…
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Romance
Just the Two of Us
Reviews Just the Two of Us Valérie Donzelli’s “Just the Two of Us” is reminiscent of the “women’s pictures” of the 1930s and ’40s, films like “Stella Dallas,” “Possessed,” “Kitty Foyle,” and “Letter from an Unknown Woman”. These were melodramas, told from the woman’s point of view, dealing with often tragic circumstances: exploitation, having children out of wedlock, man/money problems, and the struggles of being a woman in the world. The actresses who populated these films – Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford – provided catharsis for the audiences who flocked to see them. The plots were often heightened, but…
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Mystery
Force of Nature: The Dry 2
Reviews Force of Nature: The Dry 2 One of the pleasures of being a critic is getting assigned to review a film you might not otherwise have seen. 2021’s “The Dry” was one of those, a taut moody drama/thriller based on Jane Harper’s best-selling novel (the first in a series). It starred Eric Bana as Melbourne cop Aaron Falk who returned to his hometown and is drawn into a world of mysteries and secrets. Unfortunately, “Force of Nature: The Dry 2,” based on the second book in Harper’s “Aaron Falk” series, also directed by Connolly, doesn’t grasp its own complexities…
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Horror
Lumina
Reviews Lumina There are bad movies, there are really bad movies, and then there’s “Lumina,” a film so breathtaking in its overall incompetence that one starts to wonder if it’s not intentionally so in the hope of being the next “The Room” or “Birdemic.” How else to explain some of the laughable shot choices, inconsistent characters, nonsensical plotting, and dialogue that sounds like it was either produced by A.I. or Google Translate of a script written in another language? One of the hardest working men in the history of his industry, Eric Roberts, pops in and out for a matter…
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Drama
Widow Clicquot
Reviews Widow Clicquot I haven’t had a drink in almost fifteen years, and during the last days of my drinking champagne certainly wasn’t doing the job for me anymore. So upon being called to consider this movie, I feel a little like a more extreme version of Dos Equis’ “Most Interesting Man in the World” character, who said, “I don’t always drink beer, but…” Anyway. I have relatively fond recollections of Veuve Clicquot being a relatively affordable REAL CHAMPAGNE, as opposed to its cheap bastard cousin, sparkling wine. Back in 1985 you could get a 375 ml bottle for about…
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Documentary
Scala!!!
Reviews Scala!!! Jane Giles and Ali Catterall’s documentary “Scala!!!” is about a legendary, notorious, hugely influential and long-gone London theater. But it’ll appeal to anyone whose formative moviegoing years were defined by eccentric, usually urban or college-town cinemas that programmed whatever the folks who ran the place found interesting and switched lineups every day or two. There are increasingly few such venues left, alas, with real estate having become usuriously priced all over the world and “content” having largely replaced the notion of “entertainment,” a thing one sought outside of the home. But this is a fun testimonial to a place that meant something. Witnesses to the Scala’s history…
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Comedy
Find Me Falling
Reviews Find Me Falling When many of us think of vacationing on the Mediterranean, the first things that come to mind might be the gorgeous blue-green crystalline waters, the picturesque villages anchored on the shoreline, and the many variations of seafood fare available within walking distance. Perhaps that’s part of what inspired rockstar John Allman (Harry Connick Jr.) to escape the pressures of the music business to catch a little rest and relaxation on the scenic island of Cyprus. Unfortunately, he’s confronted with a more serious problem when the house on a cliff he purchased turns out to be a…
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Amazon Prime
Ricky Stanicky
Reviews Ricky Stanicky Before Judd Apatow cornered the comedy market on movies about permanently adolescent men, there was Peter Farrelly, whose movies with his brother Bobby could range from sweetly funny—if at times inappropriate—like “Dumb and Dumber” or “There’s Something About Mary” to however one would describe the notorious trainwreck that was his solo outing in “Movie 43.” Since then, Farrelly branched out to television, the Oscar-winning “Green Book,” and the dramatic Vietnam War era misadventure “The Greatest Beer Run Ever.” Now, he’s returned to the familiar stale dude comedies of yore with “Ricky Stanicky.” “Ricky Stanicky” feels like a…
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