Doctor Sleep
In a genre where conversations of Ari Aster, Jordan Peele and Robert Eggers reign supreme, American horror filmmaking has been silently led by Mike Flanagan during the past decade. Making ripples...
View ArticleLove Is Blind
Love Is Blind plays like the movie equivalent of a morose B-side from a Cure cover band where the knockoffs finally get a shot to show us what they have, but the result turns out tepid and scattershot....
View ArticlePrimal
Nicolas Cage’s late period filmography is shaped as much by his own wildman theatrics as by his unpredictable financial needs, so any new film with his face on the cover is liable to be batshit crazy...
View ArticleThe Kingmaker
In The Kingmaker, her follow-up to the similarly frustrating documentary The Queen of Versailles, director Lauren Greenfield provides an illuminating and intimate portrait of Imelda Marcos, the former...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Mortdecai
A decade ago, near the dawn of the streaming age, the mere act of being able to beam movies directly to your television seemed like a form of magic. The technical quality wasn’t always great, and the...
View ArticleMickey and the Bear
The American Story circa 2019 is one of sadness. It’s one of towns time forgot, one of unspoken mental illness, drug addiction. As the country continues to rot from the inside out, more stories like...
View ArticleFord v Ferrari
Ford v Ferrari feels like a throwback to the bloated prestige pictures of the ‘80s, all the way down to its USA-first message. Telling the story of the 1966 Le Mans auto race, a 24-hour ordeal that...
View ArticleCharlie’s Angels
Its theme of women’s empowerment tempered by a fear of clean energy, the latest reboot of the popular ’70s TV series “Charlie’s Angels” sends some strange mixed messages. But director-producer-star...
View ArticleThe Irishman
Martin Scorsese’s crime films tend to follow a similar pattern: reveling in the subjective ecstasy of their protagonists’ wanton ids before sinking into the harsh reality of consequences and implosion,...
View ArticleThe Warrior Queen of Jhansi
The story of Lakshmibai, the Rani of Jhansi, practically delivers itself on a platter for anybody who wants to make an epic period piece. The tale of a female Indian monarch leading her people into...
View ArticleEverybody’s Everything
At one point in Sebastian Jones and Ramez Silyan’s Everybody’s Everything, Lil Peep’s explosion into international fame is described as “a blur.” Looking back now, it does feel that way—he released his...
View ArticleThe Hottest August
When director Brett Story took to the streets of New York City in August of 2017 to film her new documentary The Hottest August, it had been nearly five years since Hurricane Sandy hit. The storm...
View ArticleWaves
Both thematically and cinematically, Trey Edward Shults’ Waves is a lot. It begins with a calm capturing of a young girl riding her bike, then devolves into a work of maddening yet fascinating chaos....
View ArticleAtlantics
The Dakar of Mati Diop’s Atlantics is a city in flux. At its outskirts, cattle still roam patches of arid land. Looming in the background, however, are rising buildings of steel and glass, a new...
View ArticleRevisit: Good Morning, Vietnam
Looking back, many of the films that starred Robin Williams aren’t just films that starred Robin Williams; they feel like their own subgenre: Robin Williams films. This only happens with a few actors...
View ArticleEarthquake Bird
An unreliable narrator can imbue a story with an intriguing layer of mystery or it can send a plot spiraling into nonsense. Unfortunately, Wash Westmoreland’s latest feature falls into the latter...
View ArticleOeuvre: Varda: The Beaches of Agnés
By the time 2008’s The Beaches of Agnés rolled around, Agnés Varda’s legacy was pretty much cemented. She’d been an arthouse genius, a critical success, a bold experimenter and an incisive...
View Article21 Bridges
Despite looking like little more than middlebrow “cop”-aganda, Chadwick Boseman’s new action vehicle 21 Bridges obscures a pleasant and shrewd thriller amidst its high-concept tomfoolery. This is a...
View ArticleFrozen II
On the way to the theater to see Frozen II you might feel inclined to say something like this to the six-year-old accompanying you: “Listen, every great movie gets a sequel, but the list of great ones...
View ArticleVarda by Agnès
Varda by Agnès begins with a tranquil tour through its maker’s filmography, the credits laid over stills from various narrative features, documentaries and shorts from Agnès Varda’s six-decade career....
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