The audaciousness of Atomic Blonde – in its performances, its action set pieces, its hopelessly convoluted screenplay – is certainly endearing at moments. Cherlize Theron’s performance as an MI6 agent named Lorraine Broughton is thoroughly investedRead Full Review

Landline is the kind of narratively messy, tonally skelter New York City indie I can get behind. The film reflects its characters who are all exploring various modes of misbehavior, sometimes uncomfortably so. This isRead Full Review

I’m eternally fascinated by Christopher Nolan. He seems to connect the dots between the mainstream powerhouses of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas with the offbeat video generation of Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh; and heRead Full Review

It’s hard for me to know what to make of The Little Hours. It, at times, feels like the consequence of too much unchecked postmodernity. The film is unapologetically unhinged in its portrayal of human behavior.Read Full Review

A Ghost Story imagines paranormal activity in a way that is simultaneously childish and garishly adroit. The ghosts in this story appear as superficial, bed sheet-covered figures with comical eye holes that peek into nothing butRead Full Review

It’s easy to watch a film like The Big Sick and think that it’s probably too long, to punish it as another Judd Apatow-associated piece that lacks for editorial integrity. But that would actually be incorrect. TheRead Full Review

What a treat Edgar Wright’s films are. His movies are solid testaments to the enduring beauty of cinema and impressive exercises of formal expertise. His filmmaking is so precise and kinetic, it’s seemingly a miracleRead Full Review

There’s a certain swampiness to Sofia Coppola’s latest film, a deliberate humidity that the movie enforces upon the audience. Not since Lee Daniels’ The Paperboy have I felt so clammy. Both films take place in theRead Full Review

Trey Edward Shults has only been in the cinematic consciousness for a little over a year, after his first feature, Krisha, came out in the Spring of 2016. That film was so incredible in such a sharp,Read Full Review

At the end of Wonder Woman‘s first act, Gal Gadot’s superhero, Diana, is warned by Connie Nielsen’s Queen Hippolyta that the world of men is a treacherous place, and that “They don’t deserve you”. It’s notRead Full Review

Band Aid is getting a lot of good press because it was shot with an all-female crew. I couldn’t say whether this is actually the first film ever to do this (I would guess thatRead Full Review

It’s always been fitting that director Guy Ritchie’s first name was just the simple ‘Guy’. It’s made him the butt of a few jokes, but it really is such a perfect name for him. He’sRead Full Review

The second Guardians of the Galaxy film is fine enough. The main export that the first 2014 film had was a freshness separate from the other Marvel franchises, and comic book franchises in general. By theRead Full Review

What can I say about A Quiet Passion except that when I wasn’t bored into distraction, I was asleep. Star ratings aside, I don’t feel like any review I write about this film would be fairRead Full Review

James Gray’s latest mesmerizing film is a testament to the varying uses of white male ego, a piercing look at the glories and pitfalls of Western civilization’s colonial fascination. In an era rife with EuropeanRead Full Review

Martin Scorsese is a popular filmmaker because he has an innate sense of editing and timing, particularly with regards to tension and character; and also because he, for all intents and purposes, created the Soundtrack Movie. Now,Read Full Review

Colossal is the kind of movie that plays at Sundance and should never be allowed to make it out. The kind of movie that thinks that a catchy hook can pass for narrative, that quirkinessRead Full Review

In the last decade, Danny Boyle has become quite the sentimentalist. T2 Trainspotting is an exercise in nostalgia unlike any I’ve ever seen. The film is more successful as a run of fan-service vignettes designed toRead Full Review

The movie stardom of Kristen Stewart is a fascinating to examine. She’s spent this decade taking down the image of Twilight‘s Bella role by role, challenging herself as a performer again and again. Olivier Assayas’ Personal ShopperRead Full Review

The cinematic success of this seemingly endless diet of Hollywood recycling really depends on the degree to which these projects choose to have fun. There are moments when Kong: Skull Island realizes that, and when itRead Full Review

The biggest plot hole in these John Wick films is that people continue to challenge his willful capacity for violence and carnage. We all know how this story is going to end, so why don’t these otherRead Full Review

The opening sequence in Jordan Peele’s directorial debut is a powerful, single shot. A young man (played by Lakeith Stanfield) walks the dark, quiet streets of a seemingly calm suburb. Before long he’s being followedRead Full Review

Christopher Nolan’s Batman films aged incredibly fast. The shine had hardly faded from The Dark Knight‘s Oscar win before many were lining up to knock that film’s follow-up, The Dark Knight Rises, with claims of pompous pretension,Read Full Review

There is a sense of audacity in telling a World War II story with even a hint of German sympathy. Historical mythologies have encrusted themselves so feverishly to the point where its nearly impossible toRead Full Review

The work of James Baldwin is exquisite, articulate and essential. That last part, the essentialism, is rooted in its passion and anger. His ferocity spilled upon the page with such beauty, but you could notRead Full Review

Asghar Farhadi’s ability to so scrupulously dissect the nature of humanity is one of the best things one can see in a movie theater these days. 2012’s A Separation was a masterpiece of tension, a bitingRead Full Review

The coupling of legendary Oscar-winning Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar and Nobel Prize-winning Canadian short story writer Alice Munro might seem surprising on paper, but not when you get the chance to see Julieta. Both are suchRead Full Review

Studio Ghibli has been fascinating audiences for decades, mostly as the main export of Japanese animation legend Hayao Miyazaki. Ghibli is usually synonymous with excellence within Japanese animation, but The Red Turtle comes from Dutch animatorRead Full Review

I find myself completely baffled by Toni Erdmann. What can one say about a comedy that sits at 162 minutes and isn’t funny? The film follows a father named Winfried (Peter Simonischek), divorced and reeling afterRead Full Review

As I watched Pablo Larraín’s Neruda, I was reminded of two releases from the end of 2016: Jackie and Paterson. Jackie was also a film by Larraín and, like Neruda, also a biopic (about Jacqueline Kennedy) that played with the mythologyRead Full Review

Say what you will about Martin Scorsese, and whether or not he still has his fastball, there are still very few directors making studio films on a large scale about harsh, complicated issues. Silence is obviouslyRead Full Review

Hidden Figures is a cinematic exercise in sincere good-heartedness. It’s a film that wants to be about race but never wants to risk actually challenging the racial dynamics of its audience. It’s safe and isRead Full Review

Paterson, New Jersey has a rich history with poetry, including being home to Allen Ginsburg and William Carlos Williams. Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson is an ode to the poetry of life, told through the life of aRead Full Review

The protagonist of 20th Century Women is a teenage boy who’s trying really hard to understand women. He calls himself a feminist at one point, and makes a point to let women know of his awarenessRead Full Review

There are few actors more fun than Denzel Washington when actively engaged. He’s one of our greatest movie stars, a true legend, an actor who’s skill and authority is rarely rivaled. It’s hard for WashingtonRead Full Review

The Star Wars stories have always had a root in political upheaval, but George Lucas never really had the knowledge or the bravery to really portray what an actual political revolution would look like. The filmsRead Full Review

Consider the passion in a film like La La Land. It’s a film that is passionate about a great many things – music, cinema, love, heartbreak, Los Angeles, to name a few. It carries its passionRead Full Review

This is my introduction to the young French filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve, and I must admit the introduction was made possible by Isabelle Huppert. Huppert, one of our greatest living screen actors, is such a splendid, brilliantRead Full Review

The JFK assassination is such a ferocious seam within the fabric of American mythology. His death, captured on television for the world to see, revealed a first-hand barbarity that most people weren’t used to outsideRead Full Review

Disney veterans Ron Clements and John Musker are masters at the kind of low-stakes sweet spot that most family films aim for. Their films are sweet, deceptively intelligent and filled with the kind of good-heartednessRead Full Review

Miss Sloane aspires toward a place between Sorkinian intrigue and Mametian outrage, with acidic dialogue that dances the line between expertise and verbosity. The film is directed by John Madden who is a dependable, professional –Read Full Review

Whether fair or not, Lion being distributed by the Weinstein Company carries with it a certain expectation. Again, fair or not, Lion will be labled as “Oscar bait” because of the reputation of the Weinstein brothers, twoRead Full Review

Nocturnal Animals has two stories running concurrently with one another. Both are pieces of fiction, but one is a piece of fiction within the fiction of the film’s actual narrative. A visual artist (Amy Adams)Read Full Review

Kenneth Lonergan is a kind of genius. There are more talented filmmakers formalistically, and there are screenwriters who have more power with words and how to use them, but there are so very, very few likeRead Full Review

If you’re making a film about communication, it’s important to make a point about just how bad the human race is at it. On the surface, Arrival is nothing new. When the Earth is visited byRead Full Review

I’ve never quite grasped the films of Paul Verhorven. The sheer magnitude of his capacity for provocation has always seemed somewhat beyond me. I can’t manage to see much beyond the extreme images he’s puttingRead Full Review

Films like Loving are not supposed to be this quiet. At times, it feels almost aggressively understated. When placed under the weight of racial injustice, cinema usually has the tendency to aggrandize, fill itself with aRead Full Review

Park Chan-Wook’s latest film, The Handmaiden, sits comfortably between eroticism and romance, between love and depravity. In a way, it’s about the difference between caring deeply for another person, and caring deeply about sleeping with anotherRead Full Review

The idea of identity is something movies (and, it should probably be said, humans) have tried to come to grips with since the very beginning. The process of finding out who you are is life-long. WeRead Full Review