How many ham actors can one movie sustain? Ridley Scott sees that question, scoffs, and then proceeds to make House of Gucci, a film based on the Sara Gay Forden book that documents the tragic way inRead Full Review
Licorice Pizza
The Auteur Theory is mostly self-aggrandizing bunk, but it exists because of directors like Paul Thomas Anderson, a filmmaker who clearly follows nothing beyond his own artistic impulses. His films are idiosyncratic; sometimes stately, sometimesRead Full Review
Drive My Car
Creature comforts are a major motif in Drive My Car. The two main characters of the film feel safest when they’re behind the wheel of a fire engine red Saab, coasting along the highways of metropolitan Japan.Read Full Review
Belfast
Every major director reaches an age where they make their autobiographical film. Good or bad, I’m often weary of anyone’s ability to withstand their own nostalgia. Belfast – an amusing but broad black & white movie about aRead Full Review
King Richard
King Richard is an old-fashioned Hollywood biopic, with all the sentimentality and mythologizing that that entails. What’s surprising is how the film turns that to its advantage. Will Smith (perhaps the last of America’s bankableRead Full Review
Bad Luck Banging or Looney Porn
Bad Luck Banging or Looney Porn certainly earns the distinction of Best Movie Title of 2021. It promises irreverence and promiscuity, a degree of playfulness with an edgy adults-only bent. Bad Luck Banging delivers on thatRead Full Review
The Power of the Dog
In a Jane Campion film, intimacy and brutality are often intertwined. The relationship between her characters is often a dance of passion and possession, with one often complimenting (and then disintegrating) the other. The Power ofRead Full Review
C’Mon C’Mon
C’Mon C’Mon is Mike Mills’s weepiest film to date. His first two features – Beginners and Twentieth Century Women – were about parents trying the best they can despite their own emotional shortcomings. That these are storiesRead Full Review
Passing
Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, Passing, is a landmark text. It’s provocative subject matter – racial passing – was a controversial subject then and still a bit taboo today. Rebecca Hall choosing this adaptation to be herRead Full Review
Eternals
After over a decade, and dozens of films, it’s hard to imagine that there are even more superheroes springing out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It strains the mind to conceive of a universe with soRead Full Review
Spencer
A fable based on a true tragedy. This is the statement that begins Pablo Larraín’s latest film, Spencer, about a tempestuous Christmas weekend in the life of Princess Diana. “Fable” warns us that what we’ll see shouldRead Full Review
Last Night in Soho
The image of Swinging 1960s London is immortalized in films like Michael Antonioni’s Blow-Up and John Schlesinger’s Darling. In those films, and several others, high fashion and sexuality entangle with the sinister underbelly of vice and murder. TheirRead Full Review
The Souvenir Part II
Just a simple plot reading of Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir – a young film student starts a passionate but fraught relationship with a charismatic heroin addict – will not do justice to the complexity of the emotionsRead Full Review
The Last Duel
The very title of The Last Duel promises bloodshed and it delivers. From early on, we get Game of Thrones-level brutality, blood spurting and spraying everywhere, battles coming down to excruciating slaughter. But The Last Duel is also Rashomon,Read Full Review
Dune
Dune is a bit of a white whale for the film community. David Lynch’s 1984 attempt is considered to be the renowned director’s biggest flop. Alejandro Jodorowsky’s attempt at an adaptation in the 70’s was suchRead Full Review
The French Dispatch
With each subsequent film, Wes Anderson has only become more persistent as a practitioner of his singular style. His tableau-style shot framing, sandpaper-dry humor and affected performances are the trademarks that have crested over ten films. TheRead Full Review
Bergman Island
Not sure there is any region of the world more defined by a single filmmaker than Scandinavia is by Ingmar Bergman. The legendary and prolific director made over sixty films in a sixty-one year period,Read Full Review
The Velvet Underground
How do you make a movie about this band? The very name, The Velvet Underground, suggests a hidden danger, an unquestioned coolness that can’t be put into words. I think that’s part of what draws in ToddRead Full Review
Titane
What does it mean to make a connection? Empathy is probably the main ingredient, then understanding. Titane is a film about two people who – by some miracle – find each other when they need itRead Full Review
The Card Counter
Paul Schrader is a man preoccupied. His protagonists are men tortured by demons both inside and out. Their journey toward moral purity often comes at a great personal cost – usually their life. One of Schrader’s biggestRead Full Review
Cry Macho
There is probably no more perfect example of a film made for same-day streaming release than Cry Macho, a film that’s existence in every way – physically, theoretically, spiritually – is indebted to it’s director-star Clint Eastwood.Read Full Review
Mogul Mowgli
It’s hard not to see the similarities between Mogul Mowgli and last year’s Sound of Metal. Both films star Riz Ahmed in a blisteringly good performance as a musician (in Metal, he’s a drummer; in Mowgli, he’s a rapper)Read Full Review
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
We are in Phase Four. This is what I’m told. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is the beginning of a new era in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, rerouting a multi-character, multi-story omnibus toward aRead Full Review
Candyman
In a brief scene early in the new Candyman film, a supporting character named Troy (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) tells his sister Brianna (Teyonah Parris) a spooky true story about the Chicago area she now lives in. The storyRead Full Review
CODA
Sentimental Sundance films are an annual tradition. They send wide-eyed distributors scurrying for winning bids on the festival’s feel-good hit of the year. CODA, the 2021 entry, meets the required criteria: it’s small, charming and performance-led.Read Full Review
Ema
Ema has had a strained journey to American screens. Stalled by the pandemic, the film from Chilean maestro Pablo Larraín was stalled for over a year, only to be dumped at the end of Summer, aRead Full Review
The Suicide Squad
Hollywood has been allowing a lot of mulligans in this young century. Don’t like Eric Bana or Edward Norton as The Hulk? Let’s try Mark Ruffallo. Fantastic Four movie was a giant dud? We’ll reload andRead Full Review
Annette
Ron and Russell Mael, the two brothers that make up the band Sparks, are having a moment. Earlier this year, Edgar Wright released his documentary The Sparks Brothers, dubbing them “Your favorite band’s favorite band”. TheirRead Full Review
The Green Knight
Arthurian legends have persevered over centuries with their tales of honor and faith. Conceived as bloated epics, dainty Disney cartoons and brash adventure tales. In 2017, Guy Ritchie made King Arthur into a gritty, bareRead Full Review
Stillwater
The performance that Matt Damon gives in Stillwater sniffs of awards bait. To play William ‘Bill’ Baker, he sports a well-worn ball cap stained with years of sweat, a tricep tattoo of a bald eagle grippingRead Full Review
Pig
The key to Pig is how committed it is to its premise. The absurdity of its story – a man goes on the war path to find his stolen pig – is not played down, butRead Full Review
Space Jam: A New Legacy
The new Space Jam movie is bad. Like “what were they thinking?” bad. This isn’t shocking. This is a sequel to the 1996 film starring Michael Jordan, which was an 87-minute parade of Looney Tunes bits interspersed withRead Full Review
No Sudden Move
It’s hard to talk about Steven Soderbergh without mentioning how spirited and prolific his career has been. He can do it all: studio blockbusters (Ocean’s Eleven), slick capers (Out of Sight), prestige drama (sex, liesRead Full Review
Black Widow
About halfway through Black Widow, Florence Pugh’s Yelena mocks the titular character, Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanov. Yelena calls her a poseur, makes fun of her infamous fighting stance, and even takes note of her place inRead Full Review
Zola
I’ve often referred to Twitter as “my newspaper”. It is a statement of fact and also shame-based self-deprecation. The very concept of Twitter is to take a variety of complex ideas and compresses them into 280-character bitesRead Full Review
Summer of Soul (…Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
The opening shot of Amir “Questlove” Thompson’s stirring documentary Summer of Soul is of a clapboard directly in front of the camera, moments before an interview is set to begin. Under ‘title’, the clapboard reads “Black Woodstock”,Read Full Review
Luca
Pixar Animation, and Disney at large, has become a bit of a geographical rover, finding areas of the world that its studio has yet to recreate with uncanny accuracy. (Before Soul, was there ever a moreRead Full Review
In The Heights
Lin-Manuel Miranda is his own industry. His own cinematic universe. The phenomenon of his career was fast and furious, torpedoing skyward with the abundant success of Hamilton, perhaps the defining piece of pop culture from theRead Full Review
The Killing of Two Lovers
David is a man down bad. Played by Clayne Crawford, he’s an overall-wearing day laborer with long, greasy hair and a crumbling marriage. He puts on a good face for neighbors and friends and even his family,Read Full Review
The Mitchells vs. The Machines
It’s hard to put into words the freshness that Christopher Miller and Phil Lord have brought to animated movies in Hollywood. Their efforts are a brilliant counter to the monolithic dominance of Disney and Pixar. TheirRead Full Review
Mortal Kombat
We are living through the Tyranny of Origin Story. Back in the simpler, dumber year of 1995, the film version of Mortal Kombat was content in its ludicrousness, with bits of exposition treated as necessary evilsRead Full Review
Quo Vadis, Aida?
In one of the few calm moments from Quo Vadis, Aida?, our title character (played with perfection by Jasna Đuričić) is sitting with a doctor smoking a cigarette. They’ve just delivered a baby in a run-down UNRead Full Review
Godzilla vs. Kong
Spoiler alert: Godzilla vs. Kong is bad. I don’t know who this will surprise, maybe no one. Anyone’s expectations for a showdown film between two of the movies’ most recognizable monsters (or kaiju – or “titans”,Read Full Review
The United States vs. Billie Holiday
There has always been a contradiction central in all of Lee Daniels’ movies. There is a part of his films that strive for prestige, for mainstream recognition of black lives, good and bad. But Daniels’Read Full Review
The Father
There are few things that Anthony (Anthony Hopkins) needs to be comfortable. Sitting in his flat, headphones plugged in, listening to classical music while wearing his favorite watch; this is all he needs to beRead Full Review
Minari
Watching Minari, I was reminded of Tolstoy’s famous line “each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. He is both suggesting an infinity of unhappiness while also alluding to a sort of snowflake pattern within eachRead Full Review
I Care a Lot
It says a lot about the state of comedies that I Care a Lot can call itself one. It’s not simply that the film is unfunny, but one would be hard-pressed to find a single punchline. TheRead Full Review
Nomadland
The adventure of discovery has long been a major part of American mythology. Even after explorers and colonists reached the Pacific, large swaths of the American public are still pushed toward what’s next, what’s new, what’s out there. This isRead Full Review
Judas and the Black Messiah
Early in Judas and the Black Messiah, Bill O’Neal (played with frantic perfection by Lakeith Stanfield), finds himself in a police interrogation room. He’s just been arrested after impersonating an FBI officer in a creative attemptRead Full Review
One Night in Miami
In a way, One Night in Miami is its own kind of superhero movie. Its structure and tone are rooted in populist storytelling, history through the eyes of American titans. That it takes real historical figuresRead Full Review