Bernard Rose’s 1992 film Candyman, freely adapted from a Clive Barker short story, is the tale of a white academic who inadvertently summons a murderous…
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…
Ninja Girl In a bleak, post-Trump reality wherein nationalist hogwash has pervaded casual discourse, Yû Irie’s Ninja Girl reflects the kind of right-minded rhetoric that…
Together is an endurance test for viewers and a self-satisfied pat on the back from the filmmakers. Stephen Daldry has become a bit of a punching…
The Show is an imperfect beast, but it’s beautiful and horrifying in a way only Alan Moore can concoct. Northampton has always been a strange place.…
Purple Sea is an arthouse trifle that merely effects the posture of serious cinema. In his 1975 book Notes on the Cinematographer, austere French director Robert…
The Sadness Canadian director Rob Jabbaz shot The Sadness, his debut feature, in Taiwan, with a fully Taiwanese cast and script that draws in broad…
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…
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…
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…
Reminiscence is silly, arch, and derivative, an objective failure that nonetheless manages to entertain even as it induces eye rolls. It’s kind of fashionable these days…
The Protégé is sometimes tonally ungainly, but its no-frills, old-school action filmmaking are a breath of fresh air in an increasingly CGI-saturated genre. When she’s rescued…