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The Feeling That the Time For Doing Something Has Passed
Reviews The Feeling That the Time For Doing Something Has Passed I…
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If
Reviews If If you’re lucky enough to attend an early screening of…
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Mother of the Bride
Reviews Mother of the Bride Over the last few years, there has…
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Babes
Reviews Babes The foundation of most comedy is the gulf between our…
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Thriller
Blood for Dust
Reviews Blood for Dust Set in 1992 in the northernmost United States, where criminals run drugs and guns over the border with Canada, “Blood for Dust” is a hard, nasty crime thriller about hard, nasty men. Directed by Rod Blackhurst from a script by David Ebeltoft, it tells you what kind of movie it is from its gruesome opening image and continues in that mode for another hour and forty-five minutes. It’s anchored to a lead performance by Scoot McNairy that ranks with the best of classic neo-noir. McNairy plays a traveling defibrillator salesman named Cliff. He and his wife Amy (Nora Zehetner)…
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Suspense
Zen and the art of rifle maintenance
Reviews Zen and the art of rifle maintenance George Clooney “The American” allows George Clooney to play a man as starkly defined as a samurai. His fatal flaw, as it must be for any samurai, is love. Other than that, the American is perfect: Sealed, impervious and expert, with a focus so narrow it is defined only by his skills and his master. Here is a gripping film with the focus of a Japanese drama, an impenetrable character to equal Alain Delon’s in “Le Samourai,” by Jean-Pierre Melville. Clooney plays a character named Jack, or perhaps Edward. He is one…
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Science Fiction
The Marvels
Reviews The Marvels It brings me absolutely no joy to report that “The Marvels” is terrible, and the worst film yet in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “Thor: The Dark World” was merely a forgettable drag. “Eternals” was an overlong slog but always gorgeous to watch. “Thor: Love & Thunder” was disjointed tonally but featured a terrifying Christian Bale performance. Within a pop culture empire that’s become increasingly inconsistent in quality, precisely because of its efforts to remain consistently in front of our eyeballs, “The Marvels” had the potential to offer a much-needed breath of fresh air. Carol Danvers, Monica Rambeau…
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Romance
Love Lies Bleeding
Reviews Love Lies Bleeding Gym manager Lou (Kristen Stewart) is introduced with her hand down a clogged toilet. She will spend a lot of the next two hours cleaning up much worse messes in Rose Glass’ powerful “Love Lies Bleeding,” a sexy, brutal, violent, kinetic piece of filmmaking that’s about, well, love, lies, and bleeding. It’s a gut punch about a steroid-using bodybuilder that’s on roids itself, getting bolder and more cinematically muscular with each subsequent twist. A few of the daringly ambitious punches don’t completely land, especially in a frenetic final act, but it’s a minor complaint for a…
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Mystery
Raging Grace
Reviews Raging Grace Joy (Max Eigenmann) is one of millions of domestic workers worldwide. She’s overlooked by some employers, while others intensely scrutinize her every move. Joy is trying to survive another day, and out of sight of her employers, she’s saving up for bigger dreams they can’t imagine for her: stability, safety, a neglected career she hopes to reclaim, and a home for her and her daughter Grace (Jaeden Paige Boadilla). In a desperate effort to secure that future, she’s saving up to pay a fixer many thousands of pounds for papers to remain in the country. With a…
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Horror
Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever
Reviews Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever Do you remember “Nightwatch,” the 1994 Danish thriller about a young psych ward attendant who gets stalked by a killer? There was an English language remake in 1997 with the same title and director (Ole Bornedal) and starring Ewan McGregor, Nick Nolte, and Patricia Arquette, among others. The Danish version was better, though even that was mostly charming for its gloomy atmosphere and unusual focus on self-absorbed, unlovable young people. Now there’s “Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever,” an unconvincing sequel to the 1994 original that’s basically the Scandinavian answer to recent trauma-minded American horror legacy-quels like…
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Drama
The Secret Art of Human Flight
Reviews The Secret Art of Human Flight Ben (Grant Rosenmeyer) is not okay. His wife and artistic collaborator Sarah (Reina Hardesty) died suddenly, leaving him in a state of shock. He forgets to eat, he forgets to sleep. Stuck in a neverending stupor, he forgets to take care of himself. When his concerned sister Gloria (Lucy DeVito) and her husband Tom (Nican Robinson) leave for a short trip, she puts Ben on the front lawn to get some fresh air – only that’s where he stays for the several days while she is gone, unmotivated to move out of the…
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Documentary
Slave Play. Not a Movie. A Play.
Reviews Slave Play. Not a Movie. A Play. “Slave Play. Not A Movie. A Play.,” a film by playwright Jeremy O. Harris, is an in-depth look behind the scenes of the director’s controversial play of the same name. Slave Play, the 12-time Tony Award-nominated Broadway sensation, follows three interracial couples as they explore tendentious racial stereotypes and power dynamics within a kinky therapy session that involves role-playing on an imaginary plantation in Virginia. Just from the title alone, “Slave Play. Not A Movie. A Play.” gives the impression that it is as provocative as the stage play itself. Unlike traditional…
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Comedy
Ghostlight
Reviews Ghostlight “Ghostlight,” which focuses on a construction worker drawn into a production of “Romeo and Juliet,” is a drama about traumatized people healing themselves with art. It’s messy in the way that life is messy. It’s one of those movies that simultaneously feels too long and not long enough. But there’s a purity and earnestness to what it’s doing that’s increasingly unusual in American independent cinema. Co-directed by the Chicago-based filmmaking team of Kerry O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson (O’Sullivan wrote the script), the story focuses on a family played by an actual family of working actors. The father, Dan (Keith Kupferer), is a construction worker.…
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Amazon Prime
A Million Miles Away
Reviews A Million Miles Away “A Million Miles Away” is an inspiring movie based on an inspiring story told in an inspiring way. It’s a tale of literally astronomical success in the face of daunting adversity, and it’s important as a reflection of hard-won representation. But in depicting the life of a man who risked everything to pursue his lifelong dream of traveling to space, “A Million Miles Away” frustratingly plays it safe. Director and co-writer Alejandra Márquez Abella’s portrayal of José Hernández, a Mexican-American farmworker-turned-astronaut, is wholesome and heartwarming. As played by a buoyant Michael Peña, Hernandez is consistently…
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Action
Bad Boys: Ride or Die
Reviews Bad Boys: Ride or Die I’m not coming out and accusing the writers of “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” of using A.I., a touchy subject in Hollywood these days. But if a computer had written this blockbuster sequel, it wouldn’t turn out much different. Serving as a more direct sequel to 2020’s “Bad Boys for Life” than people might expect, “Ride or Die” checks all the boxes of a movie like this in a way that feels depressingly half-hearted, afraid to do anything new or creative. It admittedly comes to life in spurts primarily through its hyperkinetic photography and editing.…
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Thriller
Dusk for a Hitman
Reviews Dusk for a Hitman “Dusk for a Hitman” is a husk of a great film. Director Raymond St-Jean has a sturdy central character—though the crime drama is based on the real life of Montreal fixer Donald Lavoie, much of it is fictional—made stronger through a deft ability to conjure a grim atmosphere around an actor capable of landing emotional grace notes in a threadbare story. Contract killings are carried out with cold efficiency and continual negotiations of loyalty, and these basic mechanics are enough to breezily pass the time. But the film’s incuriosity of the cutthroat world inhabited by…
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Suspense
Robbing banks is the neighborhood business
Reviews Robbing banks is the neighborhood business Ben Affleck and Jeremy Renner. There’s a scene in Ben Affleck’s “The Town” that expertly exploits the conversations we have with film characters. In critical moments, we urgently send mental instructions to the screen. Let me set up such a moment here. Doug cares for Claire. There’s something she mustn’t know about him. If she should see the tattoo on the back of Jem’s neck, she would know everything. Jem unexpectedly joins Doug and Claire at a table. With hard looks and his whole manner, Doug signals him to get the hell away…
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Science Fiction
Share?
Reviews Share? Did you know that social media fosters toxic relationships among its users, who only gain clout and/or material gains by performing inanely for each other? In this fundamentally unbalanced type of community network, individuals are complicit for as long as they allow themselves to be seduced by the illusion of power—wow! That’s the sort of asked and answered wisdom at the heart of “Share?,” an ungenerous techno-satire about an unnamed man who wakes up in an unfurnished cell with only a computer monitor for company. There’s a little more to this sketchy sci-fi parable, all about a wary…
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Romance
Irish Wish
Reviews Irish Wish Two years ago Lindsay Lohan had her first starring role in almost a decade in the Netflix Holiday film “Falling for Christmas”, which she elevated with her innumerable charms. Re-teaming with director Janeen Damian, Lohan has returned to that same kind of screwball romantic comedy formula for “Irish Wish,” this time with a bit of fantasy and the luck of the Irish added to the mix. Lohan plays Maddie Kelly, a book editor who harbors a big secret: she’s in love with her author, bestselling romance author Paul Kennedy (Alexander Vlahos), whose Irish charm masks his insipid…
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Mystery
Alphaville
Reviews Alphaville One of the most influential science fiction films that most people haven’t seen, Jean-Luc Godard’s 1965 “Alphaville” is a combination film noir, social satire and riff on tough-guy movies, set in a world of nonstop night. It’s named after its setting, a technocratic dictatorship. Newly rereleased in a restored version, it’s a disorienting, often unnervingly quiet and patient film that deliberately tries to induce a dream state in its audience, to the point of seeming to hypnotize them with repetitious bass-voiced narration and alternating black screens and closeups of flashing lights. Like a lot of great science fiction…
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Horror
The Exorcism
Reviews The Exorcism In Joshua John Miller’s “The Exorcism,” Russell Crowe plays Anthony Miller, an actor and recovering addict who is thrown into a role as a priest beset upon by demons. As Crowe dives into the role, under horrible and unflinching guidance from a director played by Adam Goldberg, he is forced to confront his own personal “demons.” But as more strange things begin to occur on set, the question becomes how much is him and how much is from something else at play? During his attempt to exorcise his demons, is Miller forced to confront actual demons plaguing the creation…
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Drama
Dandelion
Reviews Dandelion Writer-director Nicole Riegel’s “Dandelion” takes place over a mere number of days, but emotionally, inserts us so deeply into its lead’s mind that it feels like we’ve traversed an entire consciousness. Dandelion (Kiki Layne) is unfulfilled. She’s an aspiring musician from Cincinnati who plays a regular gig in a hotel bar filled with inattentive and chatty patrons. The heart and soul she pours into her songs is drowned out by girls’ nights and the allure of a phone screen. And further, when she heads home to care for her sick mother, she’s met with attitude-riddled conversations, spats, and…
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Documentary
Copa 71
Reviews Copa 71 The #1 record holder for attendance at a women’s sporting event in history was a gauntlet fought on and off the field, a feat you likely haven’t heard of. It’s Copa 71, the first, though unofficial, women’s soccer World Cup. Co-directed by James Erskine and Rachel Ramsey and executive produced by tennis icons Venus and Serena Williams and soccer star Alex Morgan, “Copa 71” chronicles the fight for women’s right to play soccer and the revolutionary 1971 grassroots tournament that followed. “Copa 71” comprises interviews with the players and archival footage and photographs that tell not only the…
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Comedy
Naked Acts
Reviews Naked Acts Contains language around sexual abuse Bridgett M. Davis’ 1996 film “Naked Acts,” recently rediscovered by Maya S. Cade, presented by Julie Dash, Kino Lorber and Milestone Films, is an independent film that takes its audience through the independent filmmaking process and the life of a generational actress. It is triumphant, jarring and pulls its audience into an intimate storyline that demands to be witnessed. The film starts off with narration by the main character, Cicely, played by Jake-Ann Jones, who is writing a letter to her mother who is a former erotica actress. Young Cicely is routinely sexually…
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Amazon Prime
Sitting in Bars with Cake
Reviews Sitting in Bars with Cake In 2013, Audrey Shulman, sick of being single, came up with a strategy: bake cakes and bring them to bars. She called it “cakebarring.” Perhaps she’d meet a man (or “boy,” as she called them) through this method. Everyone loves cake, apparently, and luring in a “boy” through his love of sugar is as acceptable as any other kind of lure. Shulman documented the experience on a blog, which got some attention. She then started writing for the Huffington Post, at one point laying out her theory about “cakebarring.” The blog then became a…
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Action
Under Paris
Reviews Under Paris Xavier Gens is back with his second stateside release of the year in a film that’s already topped the Netflix charts, the defiantly goofy “Under Paris,” a movie that almost feels like it’s paying homage to the master in its nods to Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” before going full “Sharknado” in an insane final act that will be the reason most people remember this movie. Gens can’t quite find the balance between those two films, and much of “Under Paris” looks as ridiculous as its plotting with over-done CGI and stylish cinematography. But this is a reasonable diversion…
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Thriller
Lazareth
Reviews Lazareth Three people sit down to dinner at a remote cabin in the woods. Before they eat, they fold their hands and say grace. But they are not thanking God; they are thanking the cabin itself, which they have given the Biblical name of Lazareth, and which Lee (Ashley Judd) describes as their source of protection, food, water, and home. It is “more than a place, an idea, a world within a world.” It is their only world. We hear Lee tell Maeve and Imogen about the time before they lived in Lazareth, when “people lived in cities and…
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Suspense
De Niro and Norton in a psychological duel
Reviews De Niro and Norton in a psychological duel Edward Norton. “Stone” has Robert De Niro and Edward Norton playing against type and at the top of their forms in a psychological duel between a parole officer and a tricky prisoner who has his number. Norton plays Gerald Creeson, imprisoned for his role in a crime that resulted in the murder of his grandparents and the burning of their house. De Niro is Jack Mabry, who plays everything by the book to protect himself from a dark inner nature. De Niro is an old hand at playing inner demons. In…
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Science Fiction
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes
Reviews The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes The most gripping aspects of “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” don’t even have to do with the actual Hunger Games themselves. They come later, in part three of this lengthy prequel, based on the 2020 novel by Suzanne Collins. Sure, there’s some fascination in seeing this early incarnation of the games, set 64 years before the original film’s events. Panem hasn’t been a dystopian wasteland for long, and this rudimentary version of the elaborate bloodbath we’ll know is meant to serve as the capitol’s punishment against…
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Romance
Musica
Reviews Musica In the romantic comedy “Música,” Rudy is a young man who experiences the world through sound. In his ears, everyday noises become symphonies of life, a daily rhythm that distracts him from class and his girlfriend Haley (Francesca Reale). His mother Maria (Maria Mancuso) suggests Rudy date someone from their Brazilian community in Newark, New Jersey. After rebelling against these demands, he meets a fellow Brazilian American named Isabella (Camila Mendes) at a local fish market, and with that, Rudy starts to hear a new tune, one that’s music to his ears. “Música” delivers what it promises: a…
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Mystery
The Crime is Mine
Reviews The Crime is Mine Does crime pay? In the world of François Ozon’s fluffy period farce, it certainly can. When aspiring actress Madeleine Verdier (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) visits a famous producer’s house, the meeting goes badly, and she leaves with an awful story of the man’s attempted assault. She tells all to her fellow down-and-out roommate, best friend, and aspiring lawyer Pauline Mauléon (Rebecca Marder) the moment she returns. Before long, Madeleine is accused of carrying out the man’s murder, and when it seems she can escape “justice” quicker by confessing to the crime, she does, setting off an even…
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Horror
Handling the Undead
Reviews Handling the Undead Zombies don’t have to be fast. It’s a fun novelty sometimes, sure. But the essence of zombies as a horror subgenre is best expressed as a feeling of creeping dread, the idea that something horrible is coming and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Executed properly, the slowness can actually enhance the terror, letting it sink into the viewer’s bones over long, breathless seconds. In this specific aspect, “Handling the Undead” is a great zombie film. The official synopsis for Norwegian director Thea Hvistendahl’s feature debut describes it as a “drama with horror elements,”…
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Drama
Family Portrait
Reviews Family Portrait What is it about the sound of wind? It can be undeniably relaxing, a common setting on white noise machines. But there’s something slightly menacing about it as well. Something coming. Something moving. A storm on the horizon. A pathogen traveling through the air. The sound of wind rustling the grass and leaves is almost a character in “Family Portrait,” adding to a rising tension in this unique, confidently made film that very purposefully plays more like a dream than realism. Set in the days just before COVID, it’s a foreboding film, a drama that recreates the…
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Documentary
Hummingbirds
Reviews Hummingbirds It feels limiting or a disservice to call “Hummingbirds” simply a documentary. This quiet gem from best friends and first-time filmmakers Silvia Del Carmen Castaños and Estefanía “Beba” Contreras is so much more than that. A glowing self-portrait of their friendship, a call to activism, a summer bestie comedy full of devilish antics, and a frank immigrant story, this bold slice of life defies easy categorization. As Silvia and Beba sing, dance, and make mischief, they seem to be daring you to try and slap a label on them, their challenging circumstances, and the complexities of their border…
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