-
Kneecap
Reviews Kneecap The Belfast schoolchildren stand in their classroom, singing “Óró Sé…
-
Cora Bora
Reviews Cora Bora “What is wrong with you?” multiple characters ask titular…
-
Ezra
Reviews Ezra Last month, I was a juror in the Narrative Feature…
-
Prom Dates
Reviews Prom Dates “Prom Dates,” about a couple of teenage best-bud girls…
latest
-
Drama
Fancy Dance
Reviews Fancy Dance The story of settler colonialism in North America is one of disappeared Native women, fractured families, lost language, and forced assimilation. Cinema has also played a role in this cultural violence, depicting Native people as stubborn, violent barriers to progress. But what, effectively, is this progress? What are we as a society supposed to be progressing towards? “Fancy Dance,” from Apple TV+, doesn’t bother to answer that question, choosing instead to interrogate the usefulness of white intervention in Native communities. It’s a story about resistance in its most basic form–keeping a family together no matter what. “Fancy…
Read More » -
Documentary
Power
Reviews Power Police brutality is a subject that never seems to leave the news. There’s too many instances, too many stories from around the country pointing to a larger abuse of state-sanctioned power. Some headlines bubble up to national attention, even those that don’t will leave marks on the community where it happened. In “Power,” documentarian Yance Ford pauses today’s top stories for a moment of reflection to ask: how did we get here? Ford, who investigated his brother’s murder in the achingly personal “Strong Island,” takes a much more distant approach than in his previous film. This time, he’s…
Read More » -
Comedy
Mother of the Bride
Reviews Mother of the Bride Over the last few years, there has been a trend of opulent destination wedding romantic comedies. Two years ago, there was “Ticket to Paradise” starring George Clooney and Julia Roberts and “Shotgun Wedding” starring Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel. Most recently, “Anyone But You,” starring Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell, got rave reviews and made bank at the box office. So it was about time a watered-down Netflix version of this new sub-genre emerged. Enter “Mother of the Bride” starring Brooke Shields, Miranda Cosgrove, and Benjamin Bratt. Like a magpie, it takes bits and pieces…
Read More » -
Action
Riddle of Fire
Reviews Riddle of Fire “Riddle of Fire” is the kind of cinematic bedtime story whose whimsical tone makes it easy to overlook its many keenly crafted intricacies. The feature directorial debut by writer/actor Weston Razooli works through a charming conviction: Three kids—brothers Hazel (Charlie Stover) and Jodie (Skyler Peters) and their friend Alice (Phoebe Ferro)—rumble down a country road on their motorbikes to an OTOMO warehouse armed with paintball guns and gummy worms. They fearlessly infiltrate the stockroom, procuring a box simply marked “Angel.” The only resistance they meet is from the manager, whom they mercilessly shoot at before triumphantly…
Read More » -
Suspense
International intrigue rings true
Reviews International intrigue rings true Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman turn their beverage labels away from the camera in Sydney Pollack’s “The Interpreter.” Sydney Pollack’s “The Interpreter” is a taut and intelligent thriller, centering on Nicole Kidman as an interpreter at the United Nations, and Sean Penn as a Secret Service agent. And, no, they don’t have romantic chemistry: For once, the players in a dangerous game are too busy for sex — too busy staying alive and preventing murder. They do, however, develop an intriguing closeness, based on shared loss and a sympathy for the other person as a…
Read More » -
Romance
Poor Things
Reviews Poor Things Yorgos Lanthimos seems delighted in depicting extreme behavior within pristine settings, whether it’s the quiet suburbia of “Dogtooth” or the clinical lab of “The Lobster” or the opulent grandeur of “The Favourite.” That glaring contrast between the expectations of decorum and the messy truth of humanity seems to fascinate him endlessly. Nowhere is this conflict more exaggerated and entertaining than in his latest film, and his best yet, “Poor Things.” Everything here is wonderfully bizarre, from the performances and dialogue to the production and costume design. And yet at its core, as is so often the case…
Read More » -
Mystery
They Cloned Tyrone
Reviews They Cloned Tyrone “They Cloned Tyrone” is a creative, witty surprise in the middle of this summer of relatively dreadful original movies on streaming services. Shot over two years ago, it’s being shuffled off to Netflix with little fanfare, indicating yet again that these companies often don’t understand what they have. Don’t let Tyrone get buried in the algorithm. Comparisons to “Get Out,” “Sorry to Bother You,” and the Blaxploitation films that co-writer/director Juel Taylor clearly adores will be inevitable, but this is a striking debut and not just from how it weaves references to everything from “Hollow Man” to “Foxy…
Read More » -
Horror
Amelia’s Children
Reviews Amelia’s Children I’m not really sure how genre fans will respond to “Amelia’s Children,” a Portuguese horror comedy about a suspicious wife, her clueless husband, and his creepy family. “Amelia’s Children” is funny, but the jokes are usually on its characters and their Freudian anxieties. It’s the quasi-gothic scenario that’s amusing here, and it’s as fraught as it is straight-forward. That and a perverse sense of humor puts “Amelia’s Children” over the top, though it’s never quite ha-ha hard enough to be satirical, nor sincere enough to be campy. Ryley (Brigette Lundy-Paine) stumbles onto an incestuous and possibly supernatural…
Read More » -
Drama
Janet Planet
Reviews Janet Planet When the young, melancholic Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) begs her mother Janet (Julianne Nicholson) to pick her up from summer camp early, it feels urgent. “I’m going to kill myself,” she says. “I said I’m going to kill myself if you don’t come get me.” Janet arrives the next morning, but Lacy’s tune has already changed: “I thought nobody liked me, but I was wrong.” Her mother responds flatly: “This is a bad pattern.” It’s a laugh line that quickly introduces us to the dynamic of their relationship: a daughter clinging to her mother, unaware of how to…
Read More » -
Documentary
Taking Venice
Reviews Taking Venice In 1964, Robert Rauschenberg won the coveted Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale, an international exhibition of contemporary work. The documentary “Taking Venice” is about the behind-the-scenes maneuvers that resulted in Rauschenberg taking the prize. Director Amei Wallach, an art critic and specialist in fine arts documentaries (she also did “Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Enter Here” and “Louise Bourgeois: The Mistress and the Tangerine”), portrays Rauschenberg’s victory as an exercise in postwar American power. A band of sharp-witted American diplomats and art world players figured out how to manifest a win for Rauschenberg, whose work mixed collage, painting, and…
Read More » -
Comedy
Poolman
Reviews Poolman Chris Pine’s first film as a director, “Poolman,” is a character comedy about oddball Los Angelenos that doubles as a spoof of 1940s detective movies. Pine also cowrote (with Ian Gotler), co-produced, and plays the title character, Darren Barrenman. Darren is a big-bearded, long-haired, talkative, thoroughly goofy pool cleaner who lives in a tiny trailer right next to the pool that he tends, which is in the courtyard of an old Tiki-style motel that’s been converted into apartments. I think it’s set in the present, but maybe not. Nobody uses a cell phone, and there’s a heavy pre-1950s influence in the production design and costuming.…
Read More » -
Action
Dogman
Reviews Dogman It can be fun to watch a gifted character chew scenery, especially when the performer has a good script and/or supportive collaborators. Caleb Landry Jones has neither in “Dogman,” a sweaty, listless crime drama about a handicapped dog shelter owner who’s also an amateur drag performer. Jones (“Nitram,” “Get Out”) plays Doug, a canine-loving misfit whose twitchy personality and flamboyant behavior only seems ideally suited to the gifted actor. Jones pouts and murmurs at sub-decibel levels throughout and leans so hard into writer/director Luc Besson’s tin-eared dialogue and chintzy image-making that it soon becomes impossible to enjoy watching him…
Read More » -
Suspense
Disappearing act at 37,000 feet
Reviews Disappearing act at 37,000 feet Jodie Foster disregards the “Fasten Seat Belt” sign in “Flightplan.” How can a little girl simply disappear from an airplane at 37,000 feet? By asking this question and not cheating on the answer, “Flightplan” delivers a frightening thriller with an airtight plot. It’s like a classic Locked Room Murder, in which the killer could not possibly enter or leave, but the victim is nevertheless dead. Such mysteries always have solutions, and so does “Flightplan,” but not one you will easily anticipate. After the movie is over and you are on your way home, some…
Read More » -
Romance
The Taste of Things
Reviews The Taste of Things The opening scene of Tran Anh Hung’s “The Taste of Things” is 38 minutes long. It shows two people, and their two young assistants, preparing a meal in a big country kitchen. The meal is intricate, and multiple courses are being prepared simultaneously. The camera glides through the kitchen, following the characters as they bring a handful of vegetables to an already hot pan on the stove, circling back to the chopping on a nearby table. The camera never stops moving. What we are doing, for 38 minutes, is watching these people cook, and, naturally,…
Read More » -
Mystery
Susie Searches
Reviews Susie Searches Sophie Kargman’s “Susie Searches” is a movie in search of its audience. The story follows Susie (Kiersey Clemons), a plucky misfit college student who runs her own largely unnoticed true crime podcast between classes and works at an on-campus burger joint. She’s got a knack for solving mysteries, or so she tells us. At first glance, this movie feels like it’s made for a younger audience. The dialogue is cute and bouncy but simplistic. The other characters are fairly silly caricatures, from Susie’s weird boss Edgar (Ken Marino), her dismissive coworker Jillian (Rachel Sennott), and the bumbling…
Read More » -
Horror
Imaginary
Reviews Imaginary “Imaginary” is the newest chapter of the Blumhouse lineup, directed by “Truth or Dare” producer Jeff Wadlow. Blumhouse has a hit-or-miss roster, and “Imaginary” feels like another chapter in the list of filler films. It suffers from the plague of overly convoluted plots that are executed by overly simplistic means: flat expositional dialogue, car commercial visual style, and a seemingly first draft creative concept that never irons out the wrinkles. Jessica (DeWanda Wise) is a children’s book author and illustrator who is working to form bonds with her stepdaughters, the angry and angsty teen, Taylor (Taegen Burns), and…
Read More » -
Drama
What Remains
Reviews What Remains For the first 15 minutes of “What Remains,” we follow around a Scandinavian man named Mads Lake (Gustav Skarsgård), formerly Sigge Storm. Bearded, grizzled, timid, always wearing a Rukka outdoor coat — Lake is looking to start a new life after spending years in a psychiatric hospital. He tries (and fails) to get an apartment, gets mugged at knifepoint, and reconnects with his older brother. Right when you start to feel some sympathy for this poor sumabitch, therapist Anna Rudebeck (Andrea Riseborough) shows up and asks him this whopper: “What’s this about the nine boys you’ve molested?”…
Read More » -
Documentary
The Blue Angels
Reviews The Blue Angels “The Blue Angels,” a nonfiction film about the Navy’s flight demonstration team, was made for IMAX, in two senses of the phrase. First, technically: according to Cineworld’s website, “‘The Blue Angels’ was shot with Sony’s Venice 2 IMAX-certified digital cameras and features IMAX exclusive Expanded Aspect Ratio (EAR) throughout.” Second: it’s mainly, perhaps almost exclusively, a spectacle, and as much of a demonstration of new technology and the professionals who’ve mastered it as the Blue Angels themselves. There are lots of low-angled “heroic” shots of the pilots and moving shots taken from over their shoulders with a Steadicam as they stride…
Read More » -
Comedy
Nothing Can’t Be Undone By a HotPot
Reviews Nothing Can’t Be Undone By a HotPot In case you’re wondering, “Nothing Can’t Be Undone By a HotPot” is not only the best movie title of the year so far, but also a no-frills Chinese whodunit about a pile of stolen cash, a human body, and a long line of dirty laundry. The cash and the body present themselves early on in this sugary Agatha Christie-style mystery, but the laundry gets unpacked at its own unhurried pace. A cryptic text message summons four friends, who meet in a combination mahjong/Chinese opera bar run by the group’s leader, a self-serious…
Read More » -
Action
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
Reviews Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire Every one of the recent English language kaiju epics from Legendary Pictures has walked a different path, and “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” continues the tradition. This one is a direct sequel to 2021’s “Godzilla vs. Kong,” a simple movie inspired by the 1962 Toho Studios film “King Kong vs. Godzilla” that pitted the big lizard and the big ape against each other before teaming them against a robot foe. But rather than just repeat the template in “The New Empire,” returning director Adam Wingard and his two co-writers offer a more fragmented…
Read More » -
Suspense
This train’s got the disappearin’ Western blues
Reviews This train’s got the disappearin’ Western blues Christian Bale and Russell Crowe in 3:10 to Yuma.” James Mangold’s “3:10 to Yuma” restores the wounded heart of the Western and rescues it from the morass of pointless violence. The Western in its glory days was often a morality play, a story about humanist values penetrating the lawless anarchy of the frontier. It still follows that tradition in films like Eastwood’s “Unforgiven,” but the audience’s appetite for morality plays and Westerns seems to be fading. Here the quality of the acting, and the thought behind the film, make it seem like…
Read More » -
Romance
All of Us Strangers
Reviews All of Us Strangers The surreal almost supernatural atmosphere of Andrew Haigh’s “All of Us Strangers” is present from the first shots, where the sunset light streaming through the windows of the new apartment building seems piercingly gold, almost molten. There’s something weird about the light, like it’s sentient, reaching out for this building in particular. Then there’s the building itself. It’s mostly empty. There are only two residents. It’s like the building is floating in a spacewhere time either collapses or stretches out like an accordion. Things become possible, things like forming a fragile and unexpected love connection,…
Read More » -
Mystery
Brother
Reviews Brother Many films that tackle Black stories prioritize plight, treating their characters as inconsequential stand-ins for a thesis on trauma and pain. More successful, powerful films devote their narrative effort to how characters move through their environments. They afford their subjects agency and identity, rendering them as individuals instead of thoughtless symbols of the Black experience. It’s a nuanced distinction, but prioritizing character relays a deeper level of understanding and empathy, which Clement Virgo’s “Brother” executes poignantly. “Brother” opens with brothers Francis (Aaron Pierre) and Michael (Lamar Johnson) climbing up electrical towers. Francis leads, instructing younger brother Michael to follow…
Read More » -
Horror
Blackout
Reviews Blackout If actors often make for compelling directors, then why not character actors? Larry Fessenden (“Depraved”) is a great That Guy character actor, and his work stands out in a range of genre movies, mostly horror. Fessenden’s also the producer and sometimes writer/director behind Glass Eye Pix’s rich catalog of American indie horror movies. Fessenden’s “Blackout,” a werewolf psychodrama, showcases his usual attention to performance and character-driven details. That compliment may seem surprising given that we’re talking about a low-budget monster movie where the lead and a few supporting cast members deliver amateurish performances. Everybody’s a character in a…
Read More » -
Drama
Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1
Reviews Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 Over sixty years ago, directors Henry Hathaway, John Ford, and George Marshall joined forces to tell the story of America’s push toward the Pacific. “How The West Was Won” was a tremendous undertaking. Produced through the three-strip Cinerama process, it featured a deep ensemble of high-wattage stars—James Stewart, Spencer Tracy, John Wayne, Gregory Peck, Henry Fonda, Thelma Ritter, and many, many more—and a canvas that seemingly stretched further than the country itself. Its story is one of (white) perseverance to conquer the land, the people already inhabiting it, and each other. It…
Read More » -
Documentary
STAX: Soulsville, USA
Reviews STAX: Soulsville, USA “STAX: Soulsville USA” is a four-part, four-hour series about the legendary Memphis soul music label’s rise and fall, and its impact on American culture and history. Stax was founded in 1957 by siblings who bonded over their love of music: country fiddle player Jim Stewart and his sister Estelle Axton, who took out a second mortgage on her house to finance the construction of a music store and a recording studio. The music store was wide-ranging: it is described in the first episode of the series as sort of an ongoing focus group with a permanent address, enabling Stewart and Axton to learn what kinds of music people were open…
Read More » -
Comedy
Babes
Reviews Babes The foundation of most comedy is the gulf between our belief that we can control our bodies, words, and relationships and the reality that, most of the time, they’re uncontrollable messes. “Babes” explores that gulf with exuberant joy, endearingly vulnerable characters, and performances filled with heart and charisma. Also with every possible bodily function and fluid. This is a smart and loving movie about female friendship. But before I get to the women, I want to say a word about what a pleasure and relief it is that it does not in any way trash the men. The…
Read More » -
Action
In the Land of Saints and Sinners
Reviews In the Land of Saints and Sinners After the one-two gut punch of garbage filmmaking that was “Blacklight” and “Memory,” I had just about given up on Liam Neeson, an actor of undeniable quality who seemed to have stopped actually reading scripts all the way through before signing onto projects. Despite its flaws, one can’t say that about Robert Lorenz’s “In the Land of Saints and Sinners,” a film that could throw off Neeson’s VOD audience by virtue of being more of a drama than an action film but could also bring those who had given up on his…
Read More » -
Suspense
Good country for dead men
Reviews Good country for dead men Javier Bardem plays a merciless killer in the Coen brothers study of incomprehensible evil. The movie opens with the flat, confiding voice of Tommy Lee Jones. He describes a teenage killer he once sent to the chair. The boy had killed his 14-year-old girlfriend. The papers described it as a crime of passion, “but he tolt me there weren’t nothin’ passionate about it. Said he’d been fixin’ to kill someone for as long as he could remember. Said if I let him out of there, he’d kill somebody again. Said he was goin’ to…
Read More » -
Romance
Anyone But You
Reviews Anyone But You As Hollywood mid-budget films became a rarity in the 2010s, romantic comedies appeared to be a dying species. Then in 2018, Claire Scanlon and Katie Silberman’s summer sensation “Set It Up,” starring Glen Powell and Zoey Deutch, seemed poised to revive the genre. Five years later, the fate of rom-coms is still on rocky ground, but another star vehicle for the charismatic Powell has emerged as another potential savior. “Anyone But You,” from director Will Gluck and co-writer Ilana Wolpert, has the charm, wit, swoony romance, and, most importantly, star chemistry that has been solely missing…
Read More »