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Inside Out 2
Reviews Inside Out 2 Wait. Pixar finally has a quality animated film…
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I Used to Be Funny
Reviews I Used to Be Funny On stage, comedians use their words…
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Poolman
Reviews Poolman Chris Pine’s first film as a director, “Poolman,” is a character comedy…
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Between the Temples
Reviews Between the Temples Nathan Silver’s “Between the Temples” opens with a…
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Romance
One Day
Reviews One Day “God, I love it when you guys fight. Ooh, trouble in paradise… I do! I mean, it just means you have a normal ordinary relationship.” The best friend Tilly (a delightful Amber Grappy) says these lines in the penultimate episode of Netflix’s “One Day.” She’s speaking to our heroine Emma Morley, played winningly by Ambika Mod. The sentiment reverberates because Emma and her love interest Dexter Mayhew (a perfectly cast Leo Woodall) do not have a normal relationship. They have a storybook type of love, the thing of legend and weepy romances. Based on the book by…
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Mystery
It Lives Inside
Reviews It Lives Inside It begins with your standard shot, a camera tracking through a modest but deteriorated home. In the abode’s hallways are dead, crumpled bodies. Screams can be heard emanating from an ajar door leading to the basement. We travel down creaky stairs to a body burned so badly that steam is still rising from the charcoaled skin. Its hand is outstretched to a glass jar filled with black smoke. This jar is merely a vessel, a metaphor for the difficulties faced by the Indian inhabitants of this white suburb. “It Lives Inside,” the feature directorial debut from…
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Horror
Humane
Reviews Humane The Cronenberg cinematic family tree adds another branch this week with the directorial debut of Caitlin Cronenberg’s “Humane,” starring Jay Baruchel, Peter Gallagher, and Emily Hampshire. Anyone coming to this film for more of the body horror imagery in the work of David Cronenberg or Brandon Cronenberg should mostly temper expectations of surreal terror. But there’s definitely thematic connective tissue: this is another genre flick about losing control of your own being. Michael Sparaga’s script starts with a clever premise — imagining a world in which climate change and overpopulation have led to forced euthanasia. But it then has almost…
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Drama
Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot
Reviews Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot It’s natural to be suspicious of an Angel Studios picture; after all, the Utah-based movie studio made its mark last year with the surprising box office success of the child-trafficking thriller “Sound of Freedom.” The film raked in $242 million off the back of a QAnon conspiracy-peddling star and the overwhelming sensation of fighting back against the godless, “woke” Hollywood system that, many devotees presume, peddle and abuse children themselves. So it’s a surprise, maybe even a self-defeating one, that “Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot,” the studio’s followup, is as milquetoast…
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Documentary
Queendom
Reviews Queendom Jenna Marvin is a fearless 21-year-old queer artist in Russia. Using found objects, layers of makeup and tape, and a jaw-dropping amount of creativity, she manifests otherworldly outfits and strange creatures that seem to have fallen out of a sci-fi TV show and onto the streets of Moscow. Some of her outfits are fun and fanciful, others are directly political, drawing attention to the causes that matter most to Jenna. Her public drag performances earn the curiosity of the public; others scorn her, and the police are only too happy to keep her away from others. Jenna and…
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Comedy
Inside Out 2
Reviews Inside Out 2 Wait. Pixar finally has a quality animated film hitting theaters? Granted, it’s a sequel. But after seeing “Turning Red” pushed to Disney+ while a lukewarm film like “Lightyear” took its theatrical place, it’s taken far too many years for the studio to have a distinguished domestically released animated adventure. Even as a reintroduction to a familiar world, Kelsey Mann’s feature directorial debut “Inside Out 2,” a zippy yet gooey animated quest about belonging and individuality during teenage girlhood feels like a final, albeit predictable, return to normalcy. The peppy sequel begins with the upbeat Joy (Amy…
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Amazon Prime
I’m a Virgo
Reviews I’m a Virgo It’s been five years since director Boots Riley’s riot of a debut, “Sorry to Bother You,” dominated conversations. With a deft hand that crafted comedy with punchy social critique, “Sorry to Bother You” put Riley’s creativity and contributions to Afro-Surrealism on the map. The style he implemented in that film proves to be not a one-and-done, but a jumping-off point, as he reaches into his toolbox of absurdism and humor yet again in his new Prime Video series, “I’m a Virgo.” The show follows Cootie (Jharrel Jerome), a 13-foot-tall, 19-year-old Black man raised in Oakland. Jerome, noted…
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Action
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
Reviews Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes When Rupert Wyatt’s 2011 prequel “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” revived a five-decade-old franchise—one that spanned books, films, TV series, and comics since the ’60s—it did so with a refreshing commitment to a powerful, timeless story: simple but not simple-minded, deeply emotional but far from corny. Portrayed via groundbreaking performance capture technology by Andy Serkis (delivering the kind of actorly nuance that shouldn’t have been overlooked by The Academy), the film’s Ape protagonist Caesar has led that story through the two sequels, both of them elegantly directed by Matt Reeves—2014’s “Dawn…
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Thriller
Asphalt City
Reviews Asphalt City You may remember a scene in the cult classic “Repo Man” in which, during a high-speed auto repossession, Emilio Estevez exclaims, “This is intense,” and Harry Dean Stanton laconically replies, “Repo man’s always intense.” Same goes for being a big city paramedic, and you might not even need the movies to tell you that. “Asphalt City,” directed by Jean-Stephane Sauvaire from a script by Ryan King and Ben Mac Brown, adapting the 2008 novel Black Flies by Shannon Burke, begins in the middle of a particularly fraught outer-boroughs NYC emergency medical intervention, as hapless, new-to-the-department Ollie (a…
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Suspense
The most dangerous job in the Army
Reviews The most dangerous job in the Army Jeremy Renner peers into the heart of a bomb intended to kill him, in “The Hurt Locker.” A lot of movies begin with poetic quotations, but “The Hurt Locker” opens with a statement presented as fact: “War is a drug.” Not for everyone, of course. Most combat troops want to get it over with and go home. But the hero of this film, Staff Sgt. William James, who has a terrifyingly dangerous job, addresses it like a daily pleasure. Under enemy fire in Iraq, he defuses bombs. He isn’t an action hero,…
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Science Fiction
Divinity
Reviews Divinity In a world where the imagination of indie sci-fi can often struggle to match its lower budgets, we can be grateful that “Divinity” (with a “Steven Soderbergh Presents” in the opening and end credits) exists in all of its wacky glory. Here is a cornucopia of aesthetics, not for all but definitely for some, that will remind you that not every type of film has been made yet. With some squinting, the movie almost plays like an answer to a business whose genres and scales have been eaten away by mega-budget stories, their spectacle numbed by their incessant…
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Romance
Players
Reviews Players In rom-com land, people get into all kinds of trouble pretending to be something they’re not. They try on new personalities. They speak in weird accents. They plot and plan and connive. Sometimes these tropes work. Tony Curtis pretending he’s a millionaire in “Some Like It Hot” in order to attract Marilyn Monroe. Classic. There’s a reason these tropes are used so often. They work. But when it’s empty, or when the main characters don’t generate audience sympathy, these tropes fall apart. “Players,” written by Whit Anderson and directed by Trish Sie, struggles with the inherent artificiality of…
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Mystery
Khufiya
Reviews Khufiya It takes a moment, or even a while, before the Bollywood spy drama “Khufiya” gets going. The first 70 minutes of this 157-minute Hindi-language thriller, about a conspiracy to both survey and protect suspected Indian or Pakistani spies, mostly introduces who everyone is and how they relate to each other. Once established, these characters settle into their prescribed roles. Still, you might be wondering how quickly 70 minutes or so can move and if what follows necessarily warrants such a long buildup. Yes, mostly. “Khufiya” doesn’t stray far from the stock tropes of post-Graham Greene and post-John le…
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Horror
Infested
Reviews Infested Spiders. Why’d it have to be spiders? Any of us who flinch at the sight of a spider can confirm the many legged arachnids are an easy source of terror. Most of us don’t like finding them on our windowsills, crawling on our walls, or making thread-y homes of their own in forgotten crevices. They are our foes as much as any unwelcome pest—even if they are helpful in keeping out other creepy crawlies. In Sébastien Vanicek’s nightmarish feature debut “Infested,” there are more spiders than you can count and spiders of unusual size that weave together a…
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Drama
Goldilocks and the Two Bears
Reviews Goldilocks and the Two Bears In Jeff Lipsky’s films, it’s normal for characters to talk for ten minutes straight, and it’s normal for other characters to listen without interrupting. You have to just go with the convention. Or, not. You don’t “have” to do anything. If a director doesn’t establish a context and style, if the actors aren’t skilled enough to pull it off, if the audience is given enough time to think “Wait, what is this person babbling on about?” … the thing unravels. “Goldilocks and the Two Bears” starts unraveling with the first unmotivated monologue and falls…
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Documentary
The Grab
Reviews The Grab Instead of a feature-length movie, “The Grab,” a 106-minute documentary about shady land deals and global food insecurity, often resembles an overstuffed pilot for an over-ambitious new series. The movie’s creators start by making specific connections and anecdotes, mostly focusing on the sale and seizure of land in Zambia and other African countries. Then, they elaborate with unfocused speculation that’s either too vague or dissimilar to neatly fit into their otherwise believable presentation. Both an overstimulated multimedia lecture and an anxiety-stoking conspiracy thriller, “The Grab” urges viewers to follow the money, look at the big picture, and…
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Comedy
Bad Behaviour
Reviews Bad Behaviour “Never give in to hope.” Lucy (Jennifer Connelly) writes these words on the white board while attending a “semi-silent retreat”. The retreat’s atmosphere is tense, and Lucy is uptight and irritated, all of which defeats the whole purpose of a retreat. Judging from the motivational tapes she listens to in the car, and the fact she has attended this thing at all, Lucy is steeped in this self-help world. From the looks of it, it doesn’t seem to be helping. “Never give in to hope” is a pretty bleak statement, but we find out later she’s actually…
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Amazon Prime
The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart
Reviews The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart You don’t need to know that Prime Video’s seven-part mini-series “The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart” is based on a book to sense it. With a narrative that sprawls over years and ties various traumas and their associated grief into complex character beats, it’s the kind of thing that clearly worked on the page. That’s why Holly Ringland’s novel of the same name became an international hit, attracting one of our best-living actresses to director Glendyn Ivin and creator Sarah Lambert’s adaptation. Inconsistent Australian accent aside, Sigourney Weaver’s work here is among the…
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Action
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Reviews Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga “The question is, do you have what it takes to make it epic,” says an undaunted Chris Hemsworth. It’s a call to action that comes toward the end of “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” George Miller’s apocalyptic epic western prequel to “Mad Max: Fury Road” that could, of course, be directed at Miller himself. Because this film is here to give you more: more gravity-defying chases, more high-flying stunts, more deeply felt pathos, and, somehow, an even greater spirit to push the limits of what the frame can hold—employing Christian iconography and Arthurian legend…
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Thriller
LaRoy, Texas
Reviews LaRoy, Texas “LaRoy, Texas” immediately tests your expectations. Driving down a dark dirt country road, Harry (Dylan Baker), whose car headlights are the only beacons of life amid the barren clime, passes a broken-down truck parked off-road. A few yards later, Harry spots the possible driver of the abandoned vehicle, picking up the stranded soul, a bearded, foreboding hitchhiker who looks like the beginning of a true-crime mystery. Baker is a curious choice for this role, an actor equally known for portraying hapless idiots and soulless pencil pushers. Here, he engages in cheery conversation; the mysterious hitchhiker half-heartedly jokes…
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Suspense
A demon in the house
Reviews A demon in the house “Paranormal Activity” is an ingenious little horror film, so well made it’s truly scary, that arrives claiming it’s the real thing. Without any form of conventional opening or closing credits, it begins by thanking “the families of Micah Sloat and Katie Featherston” and closes with one of those “current whereabouts unknown” title cards and a screen of copyright notices. This was apparently a film made without a director, a writer, a producer, grips, makeup, sound, catering or a honey wagon. All of the footage is presented as if it had been discovered after the…
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Science Fiction
Fingernails
Reviews Fingernails Love is pain in several ways in “Fingernails.” In the near future of Christos Nikou’s dystopian sci-fi film, they’ve gotten compatibility down to a science. To measure your affection, you and your partner can each have a fingernail pulled, which will then be put into a machine, testing whether either, neither, or both of you are truly in love. While Nikou never gives us the exact science behind this testing or why a scientist couldn’t think of a less invasive or agonizing way of measuring whether this is just a fling, the existential panic felt by the inhabitants…
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Romance
Glitter & Doom
Reviews Glitter & Doom The Indigo Girls are having a moment. The upcoming documentary “It’s Only Life After All” profiles the beloved singer-songwriting duo Amy Ray and Emily Saliers in a way that feels long overdue. And then, of course, “Closer to Fine,” a single off their second album, released in 1989, showed up multiple times in Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” blasting out of Barbie’s car radio, with everyone singing along gleefully. Hearing “Closer to Fine” reverberating through the cotton-candy-pink corporate-driven fantasia of “Barbie” was legitimately funny. The lyrics are disturbing—darkness’ insatiable hunger, fear “like a blanket,” “seeking solace in a…
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Mystery
Night of the Hunted
Reviews Night of the Hunted How much do you want to be cornered by a vindictive energy vampire who talks and talks about how they’re the real victim? That’s most of what it’s like to watch “Night of the Hunted,” a remake in name only of French pervert poet Jean Rollin’s softcore pre-AIDS panic lament against institutionalized/governmental neglect. This new “Night of the Hunted” is actually a remake of “Night of the Rat,” a 2015 Spanish horror movie about a work carpool gone horribly awry. As in that slightly earlier movie, “Night of the Hunted” takes place in a roadside…
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Horror
The Strangers: Chapter 1
Reviews The Strangers: Chapter 1 2008’s “The Strangers” didn’t seem like the kind of film that would produce a series when it was released. But it’s about to explode into precisely that with the release of “The Strangers Trilogy,” three films directed by Renny Harlin that serve as sort of a remake but also a prequel to the Bryan Bertino hit. In the 2008 film, an average couple, played by Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman, found themselves terrorized in a remote vacation home by three masked strangers. It’s an effective piece of genre filmmaking—as is the lesser-but-solid sequel “The Strangers:…
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Drama
The Imaginary
Reviews The Imaginary Born from the still unbridled creativity of children, where an empty room and a random assortment of objects can inspire the most whimsical of adventures, imaginary friends respond to each young mind’s needs for companionship. The intricacies of these invisible entities and their relationship to their human creators is the subject of Japanese director Yoshiyuki Momose’s animated feature “The Imaginary,” which he adapted from the 2014 British novel by A.F. Harrold and Emily Gravett’s illustrations for that original tome. Momose’s dazzlingly vibrant and heart-rending fantasy arrives on American screens mere weeks after John Krasinski’s recent live action/animation…
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Documentary
Black Barbie
Reviews Black Barbie “When I think of Barbie, I think of a little white doll with blue eyes, blonde hair, pink lips, and just all in pink.” From this first statement, audiences should brace for an all-encompassing discussion around the most famous doll ever: Barbie. Since she burst onto the scene in 1959, she has been considered the standard doll for little girls globally for decades. Yet, the idea of Black Barbie was never even considered until a Mattel employee and friend of the creators Ruth and Evan Handler named Beulah Mae Mitchell suggested the duo consider creating a version…
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Comedy
Cora Bora
Reviews Cora Bora “What is wrong with you?” multiple characters ask titular heroine Cora (Meg Stalter), a floundering LA-based indie musician who is hanging on by a very thin thread, constantly pulled down by her deep, traumatic wounds, which she barely masks via ironic songs with titles like “Dreams Are Stupid.” “Cora Bora,” written by Rhianon Jones and directed by Hannah Pearl Utt, is designed to showcase Stalter’s signature brand of absurd irony. The comedian broke out when videos she posted on social media during quarantine in 2020 went viral, leading to supporting roles on shows like “Hacks” and in…
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Amazon Prime
Red, White & Royal Blue
Reviews Red, White & Royal Blue Director Matthew López makes an impressive feature debut with “Red, White & Royal Blue,” a love story that skillfully blends the familiar beats of a classic movie romance with the distinctive details of two of the world’s most public young men trying to keep their relationship private. Adapted from Casey McQuiston’s best-selling book, the film is about a British prince and the son of the President of the United States. Both want to keep the relationship secret to protect their privacy, but protecting their families from controversy is even more important to them. Before that, we have…
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Action
Atlas
Reviews Atlas When it comes to the handful of names who are defiantly keeping the idea of super-stardom alive, Jennifer Lopez is near the top of the list as a multi-hyphenate entertainment royalty. Just take a look at some of the projects she’s steered in the last few years as a producer, actor, and singer, and the picture of her cultural reach snaps into place across genres and mediums: 2019’s heist flick “Hustlers,” rom-coms “Marry Me” and “Shotgun Wedding” (2022), the intimate action-thriller “The Mother” (2023), a self-funded project about her life journey titled “This is Me … Now” (2024)…
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