Awake is more likely to put viewers to sleep than scratch any genre film itch. In Awake, Netflix’s latest high-concept thriller, Gina Rodriguez stars as…
Though technically a worse film than the original, Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard rides its low-brow wave to lizard brain delights. 2017’s The Hitman’s Bodyguard proved…
If you love your action flicks stuffed full of nonsense exposition and explanation, Infinite is the film for you. You know you’re in trouble…
In 1951, the Minamata-based Chisso corporation was one of Japan’s leading producers of acetaldehyde, a then in-demand chemical compound that the company had begun…
Poupelle of Chimney Town At this point, it’s fairly useless to ascribe Studio Ghibli qualities to any new anime release, so diluted have such…
Near its end, Gully gives a glimpse of what a less maximalist, more successful version of itself would look like, but it comes too…
Akilla’s Escape is an unfortunate mishmash of cliché and amateurism, never quite clear what it wants to say or be. Akilla’s Escape begins with…
The risible Misfits marks a career low point for director Renny Harlin. Nick Cannon’s here too. Once, he was one of the most reliable directors…
In a stronger film, Tragic Jungle’s metaphor and opacity would have a more elaborate, complex mythos to match. Yulene Olaizola’s elemental fifth feature, Tragic Jungle,…
Rarely has horror felt as inert as it does in the tedious Censor. The opening credits to the new horror film Censor feature a…
Tove disrupts standard biopic conventions and mines meaning from its language-heavy approach. In a 1946 letter to her love Vivica Bandler, Swedish writer and artist…
Scarecrow Something incredible is brewing in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia). Over the last twenty years, this large yet sparsely-populated territory situated in the far-flung…
In the Heights isn’t going to save the theatrical experience, but at 143 minutes, will help kill some time. In development since the musical…
Spike Lee’s 1991 Jungle Fever, a work with a title and subject matter seemingly designed to court — indeed, demand — controversy, is at…
In the cinema of the filmmaker Christian Petzold, it’s not hard to notice a motif of water that stands out across his work and…
Caleb Michael Johnson’s sophomore feature amounts to little more than a clumsy attempt at intellectual horror. We open on a shot of a dog’s…
Bad Tales certainly tries hard but comes off mostly like an artfully-directed after-school special. The stink of desperation wafts heavily from Damiano and Fabio…
The playfulness of Chantal Akerman is, throughout her work, always nebulous. A smile, a laugh, a tall-standing stride: these do not signify transparent gestures,…