Widows
In his four feature-length films, director Steve McQueen has shown himself to be a maestro of filming pain and cruelty. His unique ability to do so comes from the way he represents both the victim of...
View ArticleUnder the Wire
Every major humanitarian crisis seems to be treated as a referendum on the humaneness of the most developed countries. Whether it’s earthquake in Haiti, famine in Yemen or mass slaughter in Libya, the...
View ArticleThe Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Fascinated by the sordid underside of human behavior, the Coen Brothers are often accused of nihilism, an indictment that isn’t without merit, and which never feels more warranted than in The Ballad of...
View ArticleJonathan
“We have our limitations,” John tells his brother Jonathan in a video recording. “But if you think about it, if you combine what each of us has done in our lifetimes, put them together, we’ve...
View ArticleRevisit: The Ice Storm
What happened to the great American suburban drama? Exceptional films in the genre appeared from the ‘60s to the mid-‘00s and revealed the apathy, suffering and even danger lurking beneath the veneer...
View ArticleThe Clovehitch Killer
There comes a moment in everybody’s life when you realize your parents aren’t perfect. It’s generally the result of a pretty benign incident—you might catch your dad lying to a friend or overhear your...
View ArticleCreed II
It would be forgivable to write Creed II off merely for its exclusion of writer/director Ryan Coogler, whose efforts on the last film yielded the best movie in the franchise since the original Rocky....
View ArticleBecoming Astrid
A fascinating origin tale, Becoming Astrid chronicles the formative years of children’s literature author Astrid Lindgren, best known for Pippi Longstocking. The movie focuses on her late teens to...
View ArticleThe World Before Your Feet
Inexplicable obsessions can drive humans to a destructive madness—you can see that in much of the work of director Werner Herzog. But New York resident Matt Green has a more benign fixation that, while...
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Revisit: Midnight Cowboy
In the late 1960s, American cinema grew up and caught up to all the good work that European filmmakers had been doing for decades. Rather than focus on bloated epics and giant-sized musicals such as...
View ArticleThe Great Buddha+
Feature film debuts generally have a certain overdetermined quality, as if the filmmaker was simply bursting with ideas, jokes, characters and camera shots that she had been contemplating her entire...
View ArticleShoplifters
Few could have predicted that Shoplifters, the latest family drama from Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, would win the Palme d’Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, if only because it felt like the...
View ArticleFrom the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Christmas Chronicles
There’s no shortage of meaningless filler on Netflix, interchangeable grist for the mill designed for little else than to occupy space between indecisive scrolls. But the streaming...
View ArticleAnna and the Apocalypse
There’s a subtle art to genre mash-up that Anna and the Apocalypse, the Scottish import that was a fan favorite at the 2018 Fantastic Fest, can’t figure out. The film is part Christmas movie, part...
View ArticleThe Favourite
An 18th century period piece starring distinguished and Oscar-winning actors smells like safe awards-season fodder, doesn’t it? But while The Favourite may walk away with several nominations if not...
View ArticleTyrel
Director Sebastián Silva has carved a little niche for himself in the indie film world, churning out mildly charming curios, generally featuring Michael Cera being various permutations of himself. His...
View ArticleMirai
It is inevitable that any animated film from Japan (or anywhere, for that matter) will be compared to the legendary work of Studio Ghibli, home to the films of Hayao Miyazaki Spirited Away. Naturally,...
View ArticleTiger
Here’s the jab: Tiger tells the story of Pardeep Nagra, an American Sikh, who fails to earn a spot on the US Olympic soccer team, but finds his athletic calling in the sport of boxing. The film...
View ArticleRevisit: Babe
A piglet with an “unprejudiced heart” is spared the slaughterhouse and plopped into a bucolic farm early into Babe, a rare classic of children’s cinema not associated with Disney’s phoenix-like rebirth...
View ArticleBlood Brother
Pro wrestling magnate Vince McMahon’s erstwhile filmmaking wing WWE Studios continues to affix its misleading logo to a variety of straight-to-video genre exercises, each with varying shades of...
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