Asking for It is a cheap and muddled affront to the women it seeks to foreground. Asking for It, the debut feature from writer-director Eamon O’Rourke,…
Great Freedom is a tender celebration of unconventionality, in all its complex and varied incarnations. Paragraph 175 was a provision of the German Criminal Code enacted…
A Madea Homecoming offers conclusive evidence that Perry’s work as a (melo)dramatist is, at this point, far superior to his comedic endeavors. With 47 directorial and…
Mother Schmuckers is sub-John Waters more-busting that fails to understand the essential appeal of its inspirational touchstone. American audiences encountering the Belgian gross-out comedy Mother Schmuckers…
The Batman is an entirely overlong and overextended affair, but otherwise delivers gorgeous imagery, thoughtful mythos, and playfully brooding emo inflection. The Dark Knight is moodier…
Rock Bottom Riser is a work which regrettably shoehorns haptic political messaging into its otherwise incredible footage. Located somewhere in the Pacific Ocean — a body…
Huda’s Salon uses genre trappings as a pretext to gesture at loose connections to reality rather than meaningfully developing anything. The crucial difference between a…
If one were to name the auteur who most avidly committed to the integrity of mise-en-scène and who was always truly passionate in polemical defenses…
Servants is a brutal, efficient affair, unconventional in its dramaturgy but landing with considerable force. Director Ivan Ostrochovský’s Servants begins with a cryptic, murky sequence…
The Desperate Hour is such a shrug of a film that it isn’t even worth considering the potentially offensive exploitation of its conceit. With The…
OK, so things don’t really vanish anymore: even the most limited film release will (most likely, eventually) find its way onto some streaming service or…
Potato Dreams of America is an uneven, arrhythmic effort that undermines its early promise with a blunted second half. If Marvel’s Wandavision has left you…
Tsui Hark presents something of a glorious contradiction, the kind that nevertheless hewed closely to the norm in the crazed grandeur of Hong Kong during…
Cinephiles of a certain breed are going to find a lot to like about Jakko (Petri Poikolainen), the smart-ass protagonist of the Finnish import The…
The Novelist’s Film One of the most pleasurable ways to engage with a Hong Sang-soo film is to consider the similarities and differences between each…
Friends and Strangers has plenty on its mind and is expertly crafted, but it fails to fully coalesce into a cogent whole. Friends and Strangers,…
The Weeknd These days, Abel Tesfaye occupies a pretty elite stratum of the pop music world as The Weeknd, straddling the line between consistent Billboard…
Uncharted is a bland, National Treasure-esque mess of CGI and hackneyed globe-trotter tropes. Uncharted is the umpteenth attempt by Hollywood to turn a globally popular…
Hellbender is the best kind of DIY effort, technically accomplished and on the verge of transcendent horror. 2019 introduced genre audiences to The Deeper You…
Coma There have been a number of “lockdown movies” since the outbreak of Covid, and most of them have been unfortunate affairs. While it’s true…
Studio 666 is an obvious labor of love for Grohl and co., but one that delivers neither the necessary horror or comedy of its fan-service inspiration.…