The Sandman operates in a curious strata these days, as the haters have had to concede to the fact that There Is Something To Adam Sandler — thanks to stray cool-guy director cosigns — even as the bulk of the man’s output is still routinely met with disdain from mainstream media types. None of this really seems to jibe with the public’s perception of Sandler’s oeuvre, either: his latter day Netflix partnership has regularly resulted in films that break in-house…
Amy Poehler‘s Wine Country barely qualifies as a movie – it’s essentially a vacation slideshow featuring a who’s who of industry funny women. Much like Alexander Payne’s Sideways but recast with middle-aged women, Wine Country finds a group of former co-workers out on a wine tour in the…
In the 2018 election, more women, and specifically women of color, ran for elected office than ever before. Many of these women were progressives running grassroots campaigns against establishment Democrats, advocating for what they consider to be real progressive change in the face of…
With the public’s appetite for true crime reaching seemingly insatiable levels, Netflix has gone all-in on serial killer Ted Bundy, releasing the four-part documentary Conversations With a Serial Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes and Bundy biopic Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile within months of each…
Like most pop stars who ascend to her level, Beyoncé Knowles is rather inscrutable — despite the ubiquitous image and brand. It’s hard to determine with much certainty what percentage of Beyoncé’s message is passionately held belief and how much is devastatingly savvy PR…
Yeo Siew Hua’s A Land Imagined is a strange beast, beginning as a straightforward, noir-inflected procedural before gradually giving way to a strange, dreamlike reverie, as the narrative contorts itself. Call it a long day’s journey into night. Set in Singapore, Detective Lok (Peter Yu)…
It’s really not clear why Oscar-winning actress Brie Larson would want to cash-in her awards clout on a hopelessly muddled slog like Unicorn Store. Filmed ages ago, the film has been sitting on a shelf since at least 2017, only finally being released now, presumably,…
The directorial debut of Ghanan filmmaker Sam Blitz Bazawule takes a while to get where it’s going; the plot synopsis of the 80-minute film that’s floating around the internet really only describes the last 20 or so minutes. The Burial of Kojo is ostensibly about…
One baffling segment in BNK48: Girls Don’t Cry sees the Thai version of Japanese girl group AKB48’s “Koisuru Fortune Cookie” — one of the most popular J-pop singles released this decade — being regarded as a potential flop by some members of BNK48, the Thai branch of…
The Dirt is a terrible movie. Adapted from Mötley Crüe’s group-authored autobiography of the same name, Jeff Tremaine’s film is This Is Spinal Tap without the self-aware irony, a biopic that stumbles into every cliché that Walk Hard skewered over a decade ago. The actors playing Nikki Sixx…
