We all know what to expect of a royal biopic. The vast, sweeping palaces. Complex, ornate clothing. Rigid interiority thinly veiling robust emotion. Whether by design or by necessity of a limited budget, Corsage sidesteps a lotRead Full Review

The last time we had a new Sarah Polley was all the way back in 2013, when her documentary Stories We Tell laid bare the secrets that lie within her family. That film was tinged withRead Full Review

When he’s in between films, it does always feel like we’ve lost James Cameron to his infatuations. His submarine expeditions to explore the wreckage of the Titanic is still one of his great obsessions all theseRead Full Review

Empire of Light is a movie that has a lot of reverence for the more granular details of cinema. Yes, it takes place in a movie house and you often see the marquee lit upRead Full Review

Samuel D. Hunter’s play The Whale is a work brimming with so much self-hatred that you can almost forgive the complete lack of care it takes with its delicate subject matter. Almost. The subjectivity of itsRead Full Review

2022 has been a historically lucrative year for naval aviation dramas. Well, for one movie anyway. Top Gun: Maverick has made over a billion dollars worldwide since its release on Memorial Day weekend, a triumph that feltRead Full Review

David Foster Wallace once famously claimed that “every love story is a ghost story”. Like many of Wallace’s quotes, it’s a romantic gesture flush with alternate meanings. I don’t think of Joanna Hogg as a DavidRead Full Review

The Inspection excels at subverting your expectation. We have our notions about a US Marine Basic Training drama, and that notion gets even more narrow when you learn that the protagonist is a queer characterRead Full Review

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is part biography, part protest, part photo slideshow. The protagonist is groundbreaking photographer Nan Goldin, whose life is a constant battle between the hardships of her past, the emotionalRead Full Review

Perhaps the most notorious line in the Lennon-penned Beatles song “Glass Onion” is “Well, here’s another clue for you all… the walrus was Paul”. The lyric is considered a smoking gun confession in the deepRead Full Review

The empire of Harvey Weinstein was built upon the idea of prestige. Weinstein and Miramax were a symbol of high artistic standard – in simpler terms, he ran successful Oscar campaigns. While his brother Bob reeledRead Full Review

In the annals of doomed Hollywood epics, the production of Wakanda Forever has to be up there. After suffering the death of its main star Chadwick Boseman in 2020 – a presumably insurmountable hurdle for any movie –Read Full Review

Luca Guadagnino is far from the first director to make the connection between romance and violence, and to equate the rush both can give to a person. Bones and All has a lot of carnage throughout, butRead Full Review

EO follows the existence of a stoic donkey who performs in a Polish circus. EO is the name of the film but it’s also the name of the donkey itself, whose life is in constant flux betweenRead Full Review

The extravagances of fine dining are ripe for skewering. Chefs who fancy themselves geniuses – crafting plates that more closely resemble modern art than an edible meal – reach a level of pretension that canRead Full Review

In a year filled with auteurs making their autobiographical films, Bardo certainly stands out. If James Gray’s Armageddon Time is a New Hollywood-style exploration of the troubled domestic ethics within the Reagan era and Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans is a wide-eyedRead Full Review

The name ‘Steven Spielberg’ is synonymous with the best in Hollywood filmmaking. Other than Hitchcock, Spielberg’s name may be the first most people think of when they think of “movie director”. We are getting closeRead Full Review

The meteoric rise of Jennifer Lawrence was so fast and furious that it’s difficult to remember that it all started with a tiny independent film called Winter’s Bone. Soon after Bone got her the first of herRead Full Review

There’s a moment early in Holy Spider, Ali Abbasi’s new murder suspense film, where a news report about 9/11 plays on a television while a man has sex with a prostitute in the next room. It’sRead Full Review

Henry Selick has directed a lot of animated films that you love, though you may not know it. James and the Giant Peach, Coraline, and his most famous film, The Nightmare Before Christmas have become so intertwinedRead Full Review

New York City is essential to the films of James Gray, where the outer boroughs provide a home for his various downtrodden characters. His last two films – The Lost City of Z and Ad Astra –Read Full Review

The story of Emmett Till is a tragedy that has haunted several generations. His senseless murder at the hands of white men in Money, Mississippi caused a major shift in American politics which crescendoed in the CivilRead Full Review

The characters in The Banshees of Inisherin do not behave logically. In a way, the entire plot is pushed forward by inexplicable behavior by some and absolute befuddlement by others. As you watch, you may find yourselfRead Full Review

The power of memory can be arresting. Fleeting, but at times vivid, they are the foundations with which we build the story of own lives. We can’t trust our memories to be accurate, but weRead Full Review

If Park Chan-wook’s success in the early 2000s is defined by the brutality of hit films like Lady Vengeance and Oldboy, his latest decade is more defined by his sensuality. The violence never left, but in films like Stoker andRead Full Review

It’s fascinating to me that a director as divisive as Ruben Östlund could win two Palme D’Ors in such a short amount of time. His idea of satire – nihilistic and mean, shooting the biggestRead Full Review

The finest orchestras in the world are filled with musicians skilled and fortified with a lifetime of practice and discipline who play their instruments to the peak of perfection; but who plays the orchestra? In a longRead Full Review

In the windswept, coastal Irish village that is the setting of God’s Creatures, harshness is a part of everyday life. We never learn what the town is called. The sky is a permanent gray and the ocean tideRead Full Review

If one wanted to be generous to writer-director Andrew Dominik, they might say that his punishing, persistently unpleasant Blonde is a call of solidarity with its protagonist, Marilyn Monroe. An attempt to ease her painRead Full Review

The death of the romantic comedy has been declared high and low. Some say that it’s because Hollywood has sworn off all mid-budget adult movies to further invest in blockbuster spectacle, while others claim that movieRead Full Review

Too many words have already been written about the troubled production of Don’t Worry Darling. On-set feuds between director and star, certain ne’er-do-well actors releasing compromising voicemails, even a possible spitting controversy at the film’s tempestuousRead Full Review

The David Bowie estate has always been careful about any cinematic interpretations of his life and career. This was true even before Bowie’s death in 2016. Todd Haynes made one of the seminal films aboutRead Full Review

In the wilderness of West Africa in 1823, the kingdom of Dahomey lived amongst other tribes whose power and influence fluctuated with the rise of the European slave trade. What separated Dahomey from the restRead Full Review

The legacy of the 1975 masterpiece Dog Day Afternoon is that every single bank robbery/hostage drama since has in some way borrowed from it. It’s become one of those inescapable things, like trying to make aRead Full Review

Because we’ve all seen movies before, we know that Javier Bardem’s egomaniacal factory owner in The Good Boss will be anything but good. The title is a sly nod to its audience that knows that theRead Full Review

Mythical fables involving wish-granting genies are some of the oldest stories we’ve ever told. They are almost always parables about the unforeseen consequences of getting what we’ve always wanted. The latest film from George Miller, Three ThousandRead Full Review

Watching Beast is watching the perfection of a movie that has a complete understanding of what it is. There are no sly tricks, no unbroken promises. There is the assurance of suspense, characters hampered by domestic drama,Read Full Review

There are some legitimate reasons for the cultural fascination around Gen Z youths. The first generation with no experience of a pre-internet world has, no surprise, very skewed perceptions on society and human behavior. The banalRead Full Review

The post-Parks and Recreation career of Aubrey Plaza has been exponentially more interesting than I ever could have predicted. In between the occasional Hollywood paychecks of Dirty Grandpa or Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, she has beenRead Full Review

The Predator has traveled throughout the film series. He’s been to the Central American jungle, he’s been to 90’s gangland Los Angeles. He’s fought the xenomorph alien from Alien both here and abroad. One place he’sRead Full Review

How would you behave if the devil returned after twenty years? You might act kind of like Margaret Ballion, a high-ranking medical executive and single parent, whose life is lived by specific rules and preciseRead Full Review

The Russo brothers have directed some of the highest grossing films in movie history. Their work within the MCU is the peak of populist cinema, kitchen sink ensembles with every superhero you can think of.Read Full Review

The evolution of Jordan Peele from the second most famous person in a beloved sketch comedy duo to Oscar-winning horror director happened in a flash. In his third film, Nope, Peele makes the leap from didactic psychological terror to full-blown blockbuster thriller.Read Full Review

Fire of Love is a story about love within the ash of active volcanoes. The romance between our two main characters is volcanic in its passion, and the footage of the volcanoes is passionate in itsRead Full Review

One would have to search the high seas for a Netflix original animated film that has caught with critics and audiences. Last year’s The Mitchells vs. the Machines is an exception, but that one is alsoRead Full Review

In Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, Lesley Manville plays the titular Ada Harris, an English cleaning woman with an infectious, can-do spirit and the patented stiff upper lip. It’s a movie character we’ve seen before; aRead Full Review

We’ve lost Iron Man, Captain America, and Black Widow (not to mention, The Incredible Hulk seems lost in an unidentified hiatus). Which leaves Thor, the last of the Phase One Avengers, and actor Chris Hemsworth,Read Full Review

It seems pretty simple, at first. An anthropomorphized shell with a beady eye and a pair of pink shoes shares his unique experience of the world. His life is narrow to us, but to himRead Full Review

The film industry satire is almost as old as the industry itself. The navel gazing aspect of the genre can lead to something that is more vain than deconstructive, and perhaps that’s why so manyRead Full Review

We are still feeling the ripple effects of mumblecore, an American indie film movement that really spearheaded a particular kind of cinematic mediocrity that somehow passed for art. I don’t mean to say that thereRead Full Review