When Olivier Assayas’s Irma Vep came out in 1996, the brash, freewheeling experimentalism of the French New Wave was already long in the rearview. Luc…
Episode Description: This week, we continue our look at 2020’s very strange summer movie season by tackling the first wide release of the summer —…
Some Kind of Heaven finds legitimate pathos within the oddball trappings of a would-be utopian retirement community. From the cold and gloomy vantage of New York’s…
Playboi Carti Whole Lotta Red is, above all else, very cool. And as with anything cool being released into the contemporary pop landscape, Playboi Carti’s…
The Ultimate Playlist of Noise abandons an interesting conceit for a far more staid one but still manages to be charming enough in spurts. Sound of…
Ariana Grande After two album cycles that culminated in a massive sold-out tour (with multiple headlining dates at major music festivals), Ariana Grande has returned,…
The Dig is a gorgeous effort but entirely sidelines the fascinating psychological and emotional terrain implicit to its narrative. Every niche interest deserves its own movie.…
Outside the Wire boasts enough requisite action fodder to keep things moving, but in failing to meaningfully develop any of its ideas, become little more than…
Locked Down wants to be the film of this pandemic moment but is instead tiresomely repetitive, tonally chaotic, and already outdated. A January 6th puff piece…
The Marksman is a sturdy and uncomplicated but mostly satisfying entry into the Neeson oeuvre of stoic, righteous masculinity. Another exercise in stoicism and dignified masculinity,…
Hunted isn’t a bad film, but the genre aficionados who are likely to seek it out won’t find much genre styling to sustain them. Vincent Paronnaud’s…
Imagine my surprise when a cursory online search revealed that virtually no critic of note has written a modern reassessment of the 1986 serial-killer-road-movie cum…
The timely and harrowing MLK/FBI explores a particular American history that isn’t so safely in the past. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is…
The Reason I Jump stumbles a bit when it attempts to overexplain but is an otherwise illuminating and beautiful portrait of an underrepresented population. Based on…
King Car is more jester than royalty, a soft-bellied and derivative exercise in empty shock. New Brazilian feature Carro Rei (King Car) is aggressively weird, the…
“You say you’re under a curse – well so what? So’s the whole damn world.” In a darkened cave, miles away from Ashitaka’s home, a…
Episode Description: We are back! 2021 is a new year, and after taking a break due to COVID (perhaps counterintuitive, we know), we are ready…
Shadow in the Cloud holds some promise in its early genre goings, but the second half reveals an unfortunate dearth of ideas and charm. It’s never…
Herself is a well-intentioned but ultimately one-note message film that fails to build any real power. A patron of the British arts, Phyllida Lloyd’s transition from…
Pieces of a Woman showcases a bravura if ostentatious initial quarter, but it’s all downhill from there as the film devolves into mere misery porn tropes. …