-
Terrestrial Verses
Reviews Terrestrial Verses “Terrestrial Verses,” one of the most brilliant and provocative…
-
Between the Temples
Reviews Between the Temples Nathan Silver’s “Between the Temples” opens with a…
-
Naked Acts
Reviews Naked Acts Contains language around sexual abuse Bridgett M. Davis’ 1996…
-
The Nature of Love
Reviews The Nature of Love Writer-director Monia Chokri’s “The Nature of Love,”…
latest
-
Suspense
Dirty Pretty Things
Reviews Dirty Pretty Things The hall porter is sent upstairs to repair a blocked toilet, and finds the source of the trouble: A human heart, stuck in the pipes. He asks about the recent occupants of the room, but nobody seems to know anything, not even the helpful hooker who acts like an unofficial member of the staff. The porter, a Nigerian named Okwe, takes it up with his boss, Sneaky, and is advised to mind his own business. This is a splendid opening for a thriller, but “Dirty Pretty Things” is more than a genre picture. It uses the…
Read More » -
Horror
Departing Seniors
Reviews Departing Seniors The horror movie element isn’t even the most compelling part of the horror movie “Departing Seniors.” There’s no real tension in this murder mystery (or much mystery, for that matter), the kills aren’t clever, and eventually this part of the story ends up feeling entirely unnecessary. More intriguing in the feature filmmaking debut from Clare Cooney is the unwanted psychic ability our put-upon teenage hero discovers he has. Queer, Mexican-American outcast Javier (Ignacio Diaz-Silverio) tumbles down a flight of stairs at school while the jock jerks are bullying him, as usual, and suffers a serious bump on…
Read More » -
Drama
I Saw the TV Glow
Reviews I Saw the TV Glow Jane Schoenbrun’s second narrative feature is a gnawing search for belonging in the static spaces between analog pixels. They stir dreamlike logic into scavenged memories, especially in a scene early in the film that grasps at how the medium of television’s celestial radiance can grant wide-eyed salvation in even the darkest room. A young Owen (Ian Foreman) gains permission from his mother Brenda (Danielle Deadwyler) to ostensibly sleepover at a classmate’s house. Instead, he ventures across manicured suburban lawns at night to visit Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), a cynical older girl he only just met at…
Read More » -
Documentary
Veselka: The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the World
Reviews Veselka: The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the World Documentaries about cultural hotspots are as common as the film festivals that play them. Seems if an establishment sticks around long enough, especially in a city like New York, a filmmaker will want to make a movie about its longevity. In a sense, it’s easy storytelling: If a restaurant has been around for decades, some worthwhile stories are almost certainly embedded in its history. However, every once in a while, a film like this shifts into something else. This clearly happened when it came time to chronicle…
Read More » -
Comedy
Terrestrial Verses
Reviews Terrestrial Verses “Terrestrial Verses,” one of the most brilliant and provocative films to emerge from Iran recently, has qualities that link it to both the modernist formal traditions of post-1979 Iranian cinema and the more recent trend of social and political asperities aimed at the authoritarian repressiveness of the Islamic Republic. The film’s stylistic approach is both simple and daring. In each of its nine episodes, the camera is locked in place, staring, as it were, at a single person who is interrogated by an off-screen authority figure of one sort or another. Each scene plays through without edits,…
Read More » -
Action
Code 8: Part II
Reviews Code 8: Part II Released in the spring of 2020, Jeff Chan’s anti-police sci-fi action film “Code 8,” produced and starring cousins Robbie and Stephen Amell, flew mostly under the radar, despite its timely themes. Although a sequel series fell apart with the collapse of Quibi, the franchise has found new life with a Netflix-backed sequel. Like its predecessor, “Code 8: Part II” uses its high concept sci-fi to critique the increasing violence of the militarized police state, especially in the age of surveillance. Set five years after the events of the first film, Robbie Amell plays Connor, a…
Read More » -
Romance
Fallen Leaves
Reviews Fallen Leaves What constitutes a perfect film? A perfect film doesn’t have to be in any particular genre, in any event. A perfect film knows what it’s about, knows what it wants to say, and knows that even when what it has to say is unusually simple, what it says can’t be reduced to words or any form of description apart from the thing itself. Which means that a perfect film has to be seen in order for its perfection to be appreciated. So I don’t want to say too much, or perhaps it’s better put, to write too…
Read More » -
Horror
Lisa Frankenstein
Reviews Lisa Frankenstein When was the last time we got a teen-centric movie that felt like an instant classic? Outside of this year’s Sundance (which debuted the likes of Megan Park’s “My Old Ass” that you should look forward to), 2018 comes to mind as a quick answer, the year that gave us at least three (and very different) miraculous cinematic staples like “The Hate U Give,” “Eighth Grade” and “Blockers.” Or some might be inclined to throw “Booksmart” in there from the year after, too. One way or the other, let’s agree that it’s been a while. At least…
Read More » -
Drama
Revoir Paris
Reviews Revoir Paris Some memories are too painful for us to carry day to day. There are compartments in our minds where we store our heaviest memories to protect ourselves from despair. This is especially true for traumatic events—happenings so large there’s no control over our reactions. Some people can move on without remembering, but for others, the answers are a necessity to living. They give people the insight they need to know themselves better to heal wounds and move on emotionally. In “Revoir Paris,” memory is a mystery to be solved. Mia (Virginie Efira) rides her motorcycle all over Paris,…
Read More » -
Documentary
The Contestant
Reviews The Contestant Sometimes, the revolution is televised. In 1998, an aspiring comedian auditioned for a Japanese TV show that put young people in difficult situations and filmed them for entertainment. By the luck of the draw, he won the chance to pursue fame in the burgeoning realm of reality television. Forced into a studio apartment with no clothes and no supplies except postcards to enter magazine sweepstakes, Nasubi survived an unfathomable period of isolation and malnutrition, not knowing his experience would be broadcast to 30 million viewers and live-streamed to a new online audience. It’s a strange time capsule…
Read More » -
Comedy
The Feeling That the Time For Doing Something Has Passed
Reviews The Feeling That the Time For Doing Something Has Passed I watched “The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed” on headphones, in my room, trying to stay out of sight while my roommate had a date over. This is, if not the ideal way to experience this film, at least an appropriate one. Joanna Arnow’s second feature is a symphony of ambient embarrassment, whose movements are structured around the various men with whom the protagonist, Ann (Arnow), has relationships of varying length and ambivalence. Within these movements, Arnow hits uncomfortable notes that range from cutting corporate…
Read More » -
Action
Outlaw Posse
Reviews Outlaw Posse Watching “Outlaw Posse,” you get the sense that writer-director Mario Van Peebles was asked to create a list of his favorite Westerns and then adapted that list into a screenplay. Throughout the film, there are any number of homages (and even the occasional outright lift) to such favorites of the genre as “The Wild Bunch,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “Blazing Saddles,” “Django Unchained” and, of course, all those blaxploitation oaters that Fred “The Hammer” Williamson made in the Seventies, most of them sporting titles that you will have to look up for yourself. Van Peebles clearly…
Read More » -
Mystery
Lonely Castle in the Mirror
Reviews Lonely Castle in the Mirror Sullen middle school freshman Kokoro (Ami Touma), is frightened to attend school after getting bullied by her aggressive female peers. Any reminder of school leaves her with a stomachache as constant anxiety washes over, preventing her from getting out of bed. Who can blame her when the bullying is so intense? Girls at her school either tell her to drop dead or stalk her back home, where they attempt to trespass. For the growing teen, staying home is the most viable option. Bedridden in her room, Kokoro finds a portal inside her full-length body…
Read More » -
Horror
Out of Darkness
Reviews Out of Darkness Cinematic depictions of ancient or near-ancient times have come a long way since the likes of 1960s cheese classics like “Prehistoric Women” and “Creatures That Time Forgot,” pictures that put the curvaceous likes of Martine Beswick and Julie Ege into animal skins and made them grunt in no particular lingo and pivot provocatively as they fled all manner of primordial danger. The new Scottish near-horror picture “Out of Darkness,” set 45,000 years prior to the present day, has copious dialogue in a language called “Tola,” concocted by a linguist and archeologist based on real research and…
Read More » -
Drama
The Bikeriders
Reviews The Bikeriders From the very first scene of “The Bikeriders,” director Jeff Nichols is working hard to evoke an era. In an opening deep focus shot through a bar’s door frame, Benny, a biker, sits at the bar with his back to us. The camera pushes in, revealing two older men approaching him. They want him to remove his colors—his vest of patches—or leave the bar. As Benny quietly takes in their demand, we take in his visage: We see the frayed threads on his jacket, the insignia of a skull that indicates his membership in the Chicago Vandals…
Read More » -
Documentary
Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenburg
Reviews Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenburg “I’ve been called a witch, a slut, and a murderer. Maybe people confuse me with the characters I play in films … like I’m an empty vessel onto which they project their fantasies and their shortcomings, but I don’t need to settle scores. I’m reclaiming my soul. I write as a woman searching for another adventure.” Thus begins Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill’s documentary “Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg.” Scarlett Johansson provided the voice-over, reading from an unpublished memoir written by model-actress-artist-icon Anita Pallenberg. Found by her children after her…
Read More » -
Comedy
Unfrosted: The Pop-Tarts Story
Reviews Unfrosted: The Pop-Tarts Story A handsomely produced, nearly empty experience, “Unfrosted: The Pop-Tarts Story” is hard to describe because it’s tough to tell what the filmmakers were going for, much less argue about whether they achieved it. I say “filmmakers” plural because in theory, it’s a collaborative medium. But here the buck stops with Jerry Seinfeld, who directed, produced, co-wrote the script, and plays the lead role. Set in 1963, though it might be hard to tell because of the late ’60s songs that keep sneaking onto the soundtrack, “Unfrosted” is supposedly about the rivalry between breakfast cereal giants Kellogg’s and Post as they engage in a…
Read More » -
Action
Kung Fu Panda 4
Reviews Kung Fu Panda 4 Did the world really need another “Kung Fu Panda” movie? The trilogy ended in satisfying fashion in 2016 with the cuddly, constantly hungry Po finally coming into his own in his unlikely role as the Dragon Warrior. He is both the student and the teacher. He has the respect of the Furious Five and his mentor, Master Shifu. He’s proven his bravery again and again in protecting the Valley of Peace from all manner of animal attackers. And he enjoys a loving and supportive bond with both of his dads: the restaurateur goose Mr. Ping…
Read More » -
Suspense
The Missing
Reviews The Missing New York magazine ran a cover story years ago calling John Ford’s “The Searchers” the most influential movie in American history. Movies like “Taxi Driver,” “Hardcore” and “Paris, Texas” consider the theme of an abducted girl and the father or husband or cab driver who tries to rescue her from sexual despoliation at the hands of people he despises. The beat goes on with Ron Howard’s “The Missing,” a clunky Western that tries so hard to be Politically Correct that although young women are kidnapped by Indians to be sold into prostitution in Mexico, they are never…
Read More » -
Romance
Maestro
Reviews Maestro With “Maestro,” Bradley Cooper tells the story of a generation-defining artistic innovator in the most traditional way possible: through the familiar tropes and linear narrative of a standard biopic. Directing and starring as the legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, Cooper has crafted a film that’s technically dazzling but emotionally frustrating. The script he co-wrote with Josh Singer (“Spotlight”) follows a well-trod, episodic path: This happened, then this happened, then this happened. Ultimately, it falls into the same trap as so many biopics, especially prestige pictures with major award aspirations: In covering a huge swath of an extremely…
Read More » -
Mystery
Run Rabbit Run
Reviews Run Rabbit Run The topic of motherhood has long provided the horror genre with some of its greatest stories. From “Rosemary’s Baby” to “The Babadook,” there is something inherently scary about watching your beloved child be overtaken by evil forces or reckoning with the idea that becoming a parent makes us vulnerable to just about every terrible thing in our world (and beyond). In Daina Reid’s new film “Run Rabbit Run,” fertility doctor Sarah (Sarah Snook) meets these tensions head-on when her precocious seven-year-old daughter Mia (Lily LaTorre) begins to claim she’s actually Alice, Sarah’s sister who disappeared when…
Read More » -
Horror
History of Evil
Reviews History of Evil Ponderous and dull, “History of Evil” is the kind of script that plays with hot-button ideas instead of having a single thing to say about them. It seems clear that we’re in for a wave of films about the increasingly divided state of the country in the 2020s—films like Alex Garland’s upcoming “Civil War,” for example—but the hope is that this “Make America Scared Again” horror subgenre adds to both the political and cinematic conversations instead of just using controversial topics like some sort of Outrage Mad Libs. One really has to dig into the surface of “History…
Read More » -
Drama
Chestnut
Reviews Chestnut For most college students, the hazy, liminal space of a post-graduation summer marks the end of the familiar and the beginning of more uncertain futures. Unlike the transition from high school to higher education, the move away from college life is akin to finally removing the training wheels off of a bike. There are no more built-in supports — no more communal housing, prescheduled calendars, or the ability to move, almost always, with a crowd of your peers; instead, you’re left with an often overwhelming sense of your autonomy. The feature debut from director Jac Cron, “Chestnut,” is…
Read More » -
Documentary
Black Twitter: A People’s History
Reviews Black Twitter: A People’s History Black people are the architects of American culture. The hip verbiage many young people speak, the music they consume, and even the most influential art among what could be called hipsters are derived from Black people. Our distinctive perception of the world has become a pavement for creativity, and social media is no exception. During the exodus of Twitter—or X if you’re lame or a bot—the influential grip they had became so significant that it’s warranted a 3-part Hulu docu-series on the subject. For an influential sub-culture, Prentice Penny’s “Black Twitter: A People’s History” is…
Read More » -
Comedy
Prom Dates
Reviews Prom Dates “Prom Dates,” about a couple of teenage best-bud girls getting in trouble during the run-up to prom, is a raunchy, R-rated but warmhearted teen comedy. It operates in a mode that’s been around for decades but reached its 21st century zenith in “Superbad” and got a social media-era upgrade in “Booksmart.” It was written by D.J. Mausner and directed by Kim O. Nguyen, who came up mainly through TV sitcoms, and has a sitcom-y feel, despite wide-format cinematography that’s supposed to say “this is different, it’s cinema.” It mostly feels like a very long pilot for a…
Read More » -
Action
Road House
Reviews Road House “Road House” likes to explicitly reference that it thinks it’s a Western. It’s more like a cartoon. While that may sound harsh, some of the Looney Tunes-esque qualities of this reimagining of the 1989 Patrick Swayze classic work in its favor. Especially in the first hour, when director Doug Liman and Anthony Bagarozzi & Charles Mondry are setting the table for what’s to come, there’s a fun B-movie throwback aesthetic to “Road House” that clicks for long stretches. However, once this defiantly goofy movie starts to take itself seriously, and asks us too often to do the same,…
Read More » -
Suspense
Last act haunts ‘Hide and Seek’
Reviews Last act haunts ‘Hide and Seek’ Robert DeNiro inspects an unusual bathroom remodeling idea in “Hide and Seek.” A small girl is haunted by fears after her mother’s suicide. Her father, a psychiatrist, feels powerless to console her, and thinks perhaps if they move out of the apartment where the death took place, that might help. Since John Polson’s “Hide and Seek” is a thriller, he finds the ideal new home: A vast frame summer home, with lots of attics and basements and crannies and staircases, on a lakeside that must be jolly enough in the summertime, but is…
Read More » -
Romance
The Archies
Reviews The Archies It’s hard to imagine an American comic book movie that’s as proudly naïve and nostalgic as the fizzy Bollywood musical “The Archies,” which relocates the happy stock characters of “Archie” comics to a fantasy version of mid-‘60s India. It’s harder still to imagine another achingly sincere and light-hearted comic book adaptation that doesn’t also slavishly reproduce its source material’s simple graphic design. Thankfully, “The Archies” succeeds by not overthinking its very existence. “The Archies” takes place in the fictional Northern Indian town of Riverdale, which was modeled after “hill station” villages like McCluskieganj and Landour. This movie’s…
Read More » -
Mystery
Insidious: The Red Door
Reviews Insidious: The Red Door At least Patrick Wilson still cares about “Insidious.” A staple of the James Wan-iverse (he also stars in the “Conjuring” series), Wilson makes his directorial debut with “Insidious: The Red Door.” He also stars in the movie, reprising his role as protective dad Josh Lambert from “Insidious” and “Insidious: Chapter Two.” In classic “why the hell not?” deep-franchise style, he also performs a hard-rock number with the Swedish band Ghost over the end credits. (Did you know Patrick Wilson could sing? Neither did I.) “The Red Door” is the fifth, and supposedly final, “Insidious” movie.…
Read More » -
Horror
Stopmotion
Reviews Stopmotion The conceit of a tortured and socially maladjusted artist whose obsessive pursuit of their craft pushes them into madness with grisly results is a familiar horror movie premise, one that has covered subjects ranging from beatnik sculptors (the Roger Corman classic “A Bucket of Blood,” with the legendary Dick Miller killing people and covering them in clay) to ballet (“Black Swan”) to hair styling (“The Stylist”). In “Stopmotion,” the debut feature from Robert Morgan, the medium—the painstaking and time-consuming process of stop-motion animation—may be unusual but the resulting film, an undeniably grisly but ultimately tedious tiptoe through the…
Read More »