LATEST FILM REVIEWS
The Choral Review: The Song of a War-Torn Community
The devastation of war is not simply on the battlefield. The idea of the home front may summon ideas of home fires burning, but at its worst it’s a subtle devastation. Take Great Britain during World War I. A generation of young men was butchered in the trenches, and the only people left behind were…
The Testament of Ann Lee Review: This Musical Biography May Be the Weirdest Movie You’ll See This Year
The Testament of Ann Lee, a biographical musical about the woman who founded the Shaker movement in America, is a confounding film that fascinates and exhausts in equal measure. There’s really nothing quite like it out there. Amanda Seyfried plays the titular Ann Lee, an 18th century, deeply devout woman who joined the “Shaking Quakers”…
Night Patrol Review: Bloodsuckers of LAPD
These days, it’s really feeling like law enforcement is a bloodthirsty parasite on America’s communities. In ghetto horror Night Patrol, that suspicion is quite literal, as the titular Night Patrol LAPD special unit is actually a bunch of vampires. That’s the story that Wazi (RJ Cyler) lays out when he’s arrested with a giant piece…
All You Need Is Kill Review: The Same Story Again, But Different
Time loop dramas are never really about temporal mechanics. Instead, they’re about the growth of the characters who realize they are the only ones who know their lives are on repeat. What differentiates them is the MacGuffin that induces repetition: a cave in Palm Springs, Cthulhoid abominations in The Endless, a groundhog (maybe?) in Groundhog…
The Voice of Hind Rajab Review: Come and Hear
The greatest horror of the modern era is to normalize atrocity. It’s to look at what is going on around us, shrug, and think that’s acceptable. It’s dehumanizing and callous and opens the door to acceptance of worse crimes. But then there are those for whom contending with atrocity is a burden. Those for whom…
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple Review: End of the Old, Birth of the New
Since the massive success of revisionist not-a-zombie zombie flick 28 Days Later in 2002, the franchise has always been fundamentally disinterested in the infected themselves, having added little to their nature since the original idea of them being driven by rage rather than hunger. As the fourth film overall and second in the ongoing new…
Dead Man’s Wire Review: A Debt to History
What responsibility does a filmmaker owe to the past? It’s a complicated question, balancing historical accuracy with the needs of narrative. Recently, Hamnet played against what little we truly know about the Shakespeares and got a big pass because 16th century Stratford-upon-Avon is so long ago and so far away. Conversely, that means the closer…
Resurrection Review: To Sleep, Perchance to Make Movies
It’s been said that a film is merely a dream captured in celluloid, and if so then the nighttime visions that dance through the head of Chinese filmmaker Bi Gan must be too vibrant to contain within one man. They have spilled out into the worlds of Resurrection, a cavalcade of strange images that take…
The Plague Review: Childhood’s End
Few works of art have debunked the idea of childhood innocence as harshly as 1954’s Lord of the Flies, and what makes it such an important work of fiction is its astuteness. Take away the island setting and the shadow of nuclear war and what author William Golding really placed under an uncomfortably powerful microscope…
We Bury the Dead Review: Zombies Down Under
What’s a zombie? The revenant have transmogrified and diversified since White Zombie’s voodoo possessions, with the only unifying factor these days being an uncontrollable lust for warm-blooded living human flesh. However, the order of mortui vivi can arguably be split into two families: the fast and the slow. But what if you thought you were…
Anaconda Review: Snakes Down the Drain
It may be hard to believe, but Anaconda, the absurd snake-fighting action-horror flick with Ice Cube, Jennifer Lopez, and an out-of-his-mind Jon Voight, has spawned four sequels and a Chinese remake. Now it’s the subject of a somewhat meta comedy-horror that has glommed on to the series like a tick on a poorly maintained pet…
Marty Supreme Review: Historic NYC Takes a Paddling
Hollywood loves a punchable face. From Terry-Thomas to Justin Long, every generation has that one actor who deserved a comeuppance. That’s not a bad thing – they excel as guy in over his depth who the audience relishes watching dig a deeper hole for himself. With Marty Supreme, that title may have been handed over…
No Other Choice Review: In the Clutches of Capitalism
Director Park Chan-wook’s newest feature, No Other Choice, starts with a scene of sublime middle-class success. Breadwinner Yoo Man-su (Squid Game’s Lee Byung-hun) grills eel given to him by his longtime employer Solar Paper, where he works in a factory among many other veteran laborers. His wife Lee Mi-ri (Son Ye-jin, who previously starred in…
Song Sung Blue Review: Shining Like a Diamond
Every musician plays a part, a stage persona that they throw on like James Brown’s cloak, but some of them are reviving a role someone else created. We’re not talking about pale imitators, like all the glam metalers who tried to be Axl Rose and Madonna wannabes that clogged up the Eighties charts. These are…
Is This Thing On? Review: Consciously Uncoupling Under the Spotlight
Let’s call the whole thing off, thinks a couple when their 20-year-long marriage appears to have run out of steam. That’s the starting point of the movie Is This Thing On?. It’s the third directorial outing from Bradley Cooper following A Star Is Born and Maestro, and like those two films, Is This Thing On?…
The Secret Agent Review: A Pulp Fiction With Political Resonance
The title of writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho’s last film was Pictures of Ghosts, and his latest, The Secret Agent, opens with pictures of ghosts, too, of a sort. They are black & white photos of a bygone Brazil, pictures of 1970s-era merrymaking – drinking, singing, dancing. You’d never imagine these photos were taken in the…
Avatar: Fire and Ash Review: Bigger, Hotter, Wetter, Longer
It’s a running joke in certain more arch circles of cinema that no one can remember the name of the hero of the Avatar films. It’s Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), but that never really mattered, since James Cameron was never really that interested in having some singular figure save the day. He’s talked about these…
Silent Night, Deadly Night Review: Santa’s New Slayride
Remakes of certain films border on heresy. You’re not going to make Casablanca more heartbreakingly heroic, you won’t make Alien scarier, and, as 2012’s inessential Silent Night seemed to prove, no one feels like they got a big gift if you remake Charles E. Sellier Jr.’s 1984 Santasploitation classic, Silent Night, Deadly Night. The original…
Dust Bunny Review: Hit Men and Monsters, Oh My!
With TV shows like Pushing Daisies and Dead Like Me on his résumé, it’s clear that writer-turned-director Bryan Fuller has an extraordinary knack for the quirky and somewhat macabre. However, his work can sometimes wobble between charmingly, ghoulishly cutesy and simply twee, and so his debut feature as a director, Dust Bunny suggests that the…
100 Nights of Hero Review: A Tale of Tales
In a not-quite-anywhere realm of fantasy, a tale is told. In fact, a tale is told over 100 nights, and it’s always a distraction. Not that the lordly Jerome (Amir El-Masry, Limbo) or his louche houseguest, Manfred (Nicholas Galitzine, The Idea of You), realize that they’re being manipulated. Foolishly, arrogantly they believe that they’re in…
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair Review: The Action Classic Becomes a Melancholy Drama
Once upon a time there was a woman who was very, very, very good at killing people, and then she pretended that she wasn’t, that she was a regular person, but she was just too good at killing for that ever to be true. When Quentin Tarantino released his magnum opus, the female-driven roaring rampage…
Hamnet Review: Goodnight, Sweet Prince
The how and why behind the death of William Shakespeare’s only son at age 11 is lost to history. But novelist Maggie O’Farrell plausibly imagined plague as the cause, a narrative choice that had unanticipated resonance when her novel Hamnet was first published in March of 2020. The novel – and now the feature film…
Zootopia 2 Review: Hopps and Wilde, Back on the Beat
Aesop got it. You can use cute talking animals to teach important life lessons. So when Disney once again opens the gates to a city filled with conversational critters for Zootopia 2, you know there’s more than just sight gags and big adventure. The first film was released in 2016, and with co-director Rich Moore…
Wake Up Dead Man Review: Believe in Benoit Blanc
So who did the dastardly deed? Was it the local doctor (Jeremy Renner)? Was it the groundskeeper (Thomas Haden Church)? The local lawyer (Kerry Washington) or the aspiring politician she claims is her son (Daryl McCormack)? The cellist with chronic pain praying for a miracle (Cailee Spaeny) or the has-been SF writer (Andrew Scott) or…
Review: The Bad Dads of Jay Kelly and Sentimental Value
Jay Kelly arrives at a weird prolonged moment in Hollywood. It’s a movie about a movie star, released at a time when movie stars’ heyday has passed, and it is more or less loving in its lens on the movie industry, and by extension the theatrical experience, even as distributor Netflix poses an existential threat…
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