LATEST FILM REVIEWS
Sheep in the Box Review: Digital Cuckoo in an Empty Nest
It used to be that a stork delivered babies. In Hirokazu Kore-eda’s near-future science fiction family drama, Sheep in the Box, it’s more likely to be a flying drone. At least, that’s what delivers an advertising hologram from REbirth to the Kotomes, Otone (Haruka Ayase) and Kensuke (Daigo Yamamoto). A happily married couple in the…
Spider-Man: Brand New Day Review: Solid Ground
When a character has been in constant publication for 64 years, there will be times when you’ll like the writing, and times you won’t. Take Spider-Man. My least favorite runs have tended to be the mythology-heavy ones, with all the clones and mystic spider spirits. I prefer the arcs from the early-to-late Eighties, centered around…
Motor City Review: Speak Softly and Kick Ass
Hey Academy voters. I have some names for you. Remember how the production design team made you feel like you were in the cinematic Los Angeles of 1969 when you were watching Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood? Well, production designer Mayne Berke, art director Rick Dennis, costume designer Amy Roth, and set decorator…
Her Private Hell Review: Lost in the Mist
When Nicolas Winding Refn is at his best, there’s no director like him. Quite literally. Films like Bronson, Only God Forgives, Drive, the Pusher trilogy, even Neon Demon, a magazine perfume insert come to life, there’s no point at which his work can be confused with any other director. The same cannot be said of…
Due West Review: A Very Modern Western
For all its ancient skylines and sun-battered roadside signs that haven’t seen a lick of paint since LBJ was in office, Due West is a film of modern West Texas. The kind of West Texas where, if you don’t know someone’s face, then you’ll know their car, because everyone’s keeping the same old beater on…
Rose of Nevada Review: At Sea With an Inescapable Past
Avant-garde filmmaker Mark Jenkin’s latest is a curio – strange and beguiling, a conversation piece – and a curiosity, its mysteries resisting clear resolution. The story of a ship that docks in a Cornish fishing village 30 years after it went missing, Rose of Nevada bobs between objet d’art and – due to its technical…
The Odyssey Review: An Epic Both Ancient and Modern
Why does a filmmaker tell the same story twice? I guess that only Christopher Nolan himself could explain what artistic instinct drew him from the tale of the father of the atomic bomb to the warrior who built the Trojan Horse. Yet The Odyssey undoubtedly serves as an unexpected companion piece to Oppenheimer. Both films…
Evil Dead Burn Review: Hell Is Other People
When Sam Raimi unleashed The Evil Dead on audiences in 1981, what was truly innovative wasn’t the unrelenting gore, or the mercilessness with which he treated its characters. It was that he added an element of Looney Tunes physical comedy to the malice, creating a truly hybrid horror-comedy. On first appearances, Evil Dead Burn seems…
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass Review: A Wholesome Sex Comedy That Doesn’t Quite Click
Zoey Deutch was robbed. In another cinematic era, this fizzy fast talker would have been a screwball comedy star. Instead, she’s had the bad fortune of being born in an age of middling Hollywood comedies, mostly underachievers and straight-to-streamers. That the genially doofy Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is even getting a theatrical…
Night Nurse Review: The Psychopath’s Guide to Caretaking
“Nurse at a retirement community gets her kinky kicks when she becomes part of a resident’s scam” is an accurate précis of the story of Night Nurse. Yet it comes nowhere near capturing how weird, idiosyncratic, hilarious, and unrelentingly horny the debut feature from writer/director Georgia Bernstein manages to be. Pert nipples meet sagging bellies…
Moana Review: The Same Wave Rolls Back Around
Moana, the live-action remake of the 2016 modern animated favorite, will make a huge amount of money. Disney’s live-action remakes generally do, even supposed box office bombs like last year’s dire rehash of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney’s Snow White. But is that reason enough for this remake to exist? Dwayne Johnson said…
The Invite Review: Plays With Knives
If you decide summer sex comedy The Invite is not to your taste, other flavors are available. There’s the 2020 original, Spanish filmmaker Cesc Gay’s Sentimental, followed by another half-dozen iterations from around the globe, including Germany, the Czech Republic, and South Korea. I can’t speak to their quality; what I am qualified to report…
Maddie’s Secret Review: Obnoxious Comedy May Leave You a Little Sick
Ever gone to a bar and a restaurant, and there’s been a really obnoxiously loud party there that insists on screech-laughing at the constant barrage of in-jokes they hurl at each other, and if that wasn’t bad enough they keep looking at you like you should be getting the joke too, and then rolling their…
Minions & Monsters Review: Little Yellow Man With a Movie Camera
There’s something charmingly throwback about the Minions, Despicable Me’s affable henchmen who became franchise regulars and then spun off into their own standalone series. That’s the kind of plotline you might catch on Turner Classic Movies, wherein the anonymous day player steps out from the shadows and becomes the star, and anybody who still holds…
Supergirl Review: Hero With a Hangover
In Supergirl, the latest addition to James Gunn’s quasi-revamp of the DC cinematic universe, everyone has a purpose. Embittered teen Ruthye (Eve Ridley) seeks revenge against the interstellar brigands who killed her family. Brigand leader Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts, Bullhead, A Hidden Life) wants a life of murder and chaos. Interstellar bounty…
The Death of Robin Hood Review: The Weight of Being a Legend
In the 1980s British television series Robin of Sherwood, audiences were shocked when Robin Hood was struck down by the crossbow bolts of Norman invaders. Yet he was quickly replaced by a new archer under the hood, fighting to protect the downtrodden. The purpose of the change was a practical one, as the old star…
The Currents Review: Drowning in Life
What causes award-winning designer Lina (Isabel Aimé González-Sola) to calmly drop into the freezing waters of the Rhône with the clear intention of killing herself? In The Currents (Las corrientes), the new psychological study by Milagros Mumenthaler, even Lina can’t really say. After all, she has everything: a loving husband (Esteban Bigliardi) who is passionate…
Leviticus Review: Nowhere to Run in a Small Town
Many queer awakening films seem to end where Leviticus begins, with the nerdy and awkward kid finally getting the rough-and-tumble object of their affections to accept their love and their own desires. In Adrian Chiarella’s Australian religious horror, it’s the first real interaction between trembling Niam (Joe Bird, Talk to Me) and tousle-haired tough kid…
Girls Like Girls Review: Endless Summer
In 2015, singer-songwriter Hayley Kiyoko released the song “Girls Like Girls.” Now, after 11 years, the song has gone through several transformations: first into a viral music video, then a novel adaptation penned by Kiyoko herself, and now her debut feature film. Girls Like Girls is a warm, melancholy, sapphic coming-of-age story that doesn’t offer…
Jinsei Review: Traveling Over Many Years and Many Names
At the start of first-time feature director Ryuya Suzuki’s animated film Jinsei, our protagonist reveals the last time he was called by his birth name. The circumstances are tragic but in Suzuki’s unique visual style, they’re also a little funny, a little weird, and a lot interesting. Thus begins the 10-chapter tale of a man…
The Furious Review: Hit ’Em Everywhere It Hurts
A truly pan-Asian affair, The Furious is a curious hybrid of Indonesian action flick brutality and Hong Kong two-fisted sentimentality. Half The Raid: Redemption and half Armour of God, the influence of The Raid is obvious from the casting of that film’s breakout stars, Joe Taslim and Yayan Ruhian, who are reunited to bonecracking effect.…
Disclosure Day Review: Close Encounters of the Emotional Kind
As I was leaving the Austin press screening of Disclosure Day, the new sci-fi drama from Steven Spielberg, there was an astronomical phenomenon. A rare conjunction, with Venus and Jupiter seemingly within touching distance of each other, two bright spheres the only visible celestial bodies in the night sky. And my only thought was, “Wow.”…
Power Ballad Review: Perfect Disharmony
The most pivotal scene in Miloš Forman’s 1984 musical epic Amadeus has the young and arrogant Mozart take the old, staid Salieri’s “March of Welcome” and, with a few flourishes, transform it into the jaunty “Non più andrai.” The moment is about a purveyor of prosaic art realizing he is in the presence of genius,…
Time and Water Review: Goodbye to All That
From fire to ice: Sara Dosa follows up her 2022 Oscar-nominated documentary about doomed volcanologists, Fire of Love, with a contemplation of Iceland’s melting glaciers and generational memory. Instead of a portrait, Time and Water takes the form of a personal essay, told in first-person narration by Icelandic poet and author Andri Snær Magnason to…
Tuner Review: All the Right Notes at the Right Time
High art meets low lifes in Tuner, a gritty but charming crime drama set in the unlikely world of piano tuners. Unlikely, that is, unless you grew up on old school heist flicks where some guy would be leaning, sweating, with a stethoscope up against a bank vault, turning the dial and hoping to hear…
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