Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night isn’t dull, but it plays more like an album of what other, better artists sound like. After a highly…
Billie Eilish “Do you know me?” Billie Eilish asks listeners at about the half-way point on her ironically-titled sophomore release, Happier Than Ever. She sounds…
Soulja Boy seems content to perform with general indifference, as long as he’s still in the spotlight. OK, hear me out: Soulja Boy’s Big Draco…
Clairo continues to trod the same thematic territory, but Sling gets an aesthetic upgrade that hints at something more up her sleeve. When the world was first…
Happier Than Ever proves there’s plenty Eilish and her brother still have yet to reveal. “Do you know me?” Billie Eilish asks listeners at about the…
Isabella is another bold effort from Piñeiro, and a indication of the direction his particular art is headed. Isabella, the latest feature from Argentine writer-director…
Lily Topples the World is a visually spectacular documentary, one with the added benefit of ready cleverness in supply. Joining the ranks of Netflix’s We…
Kelly Reichardt’s 2006 film Old Joy has been on my mind of late, a fact that I initially attributed to some combination of nostalgia for…
499 boasts legitimate emotional weight, but undercuts its power with too much heavy-handed symbolism. Almost five centuries after the Spanish invasion of Mexico, a lone…
No Man of God works surprisingly well for a while, but fails to stick its schlocky landing. On the day before the official premiere of…
In its opening moments, The Fable: The Killer Who Doesn’t Kill immediately establishes what Akira Sato (Junichi Okada), the assassin FKA Fable, can do and,…
The debut feature of New York-based filmmaker Oudai Kojima, Joint takes the structure of a rise-and-fall gangster picture and tries to imbue it with procedural…
A tepid sense of familiarity sets in while watching Glenn Chan’s feature debut Shadows. From its cold-open introductory murder to the perfunctory psychiatrist on a…
While fellow 2021 NYAFF entry Joint admirably (if ultimately unsuccessfully) attempts to reconfigure the Yakuza picture for a modern, 21st-century audience, Kazuya Shiraishi’s Last of…
Chen Yu-hsun’s My Missing Valentine swept the 2020 Golden Horse Awards, winning Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Editing, and Visual Effects out of a total…
Joint The debut feature of New York-based filmmaker Oudai Kojima, Joint takes the structure of a rise-and-fall gangster picture and tries to imbue it with…
Shang-Chi is perfunctory origin story work boasting little characterization and an overestimation of its representational currency. The Marvel Cinematic Universe marches on undaunted with Shang-Chi and…
PAW Patrol: The Movie isn’t explicitly copaganda, but it isn’t much else either: just toddler cinema designed to sell toys. In their conversation about 3…
“And during the few moments that we have left, we want to talk right down to earth, in a language that everybody here can easily…
Flag Day’s aesthetic cribbing and histrionic character result in a floundering film that feels too desperate by half. The realm of biography occupies an uneasy…
All the Moons Though it at first looks like a typical, if particularly handsome, period vampire film, Igor Legarreta’s All the Moons soon distinguishes itself…