With direct-to-video/streaming action films now a bonafide cottage industry with their own tropes, star filmmakers and performers, and aesthetic trappings, the real mediocrities are becoming…
The Wolf of Snow Hollow is yet further, winning proof of Jim Cummings’ singular artistic voice. Much like his debut feature, 2018’s Thunder Road, director-writer-actor Jim…
Where many festivals this year have had to get creative in their exhibition format, Nightstream has taken that industrious spirit to a new level —…
Trump Card was always going to be pathetic, but it surprises in demonstrating new lows of argumentation and cohesion from its soft-minded director. Dinesh D’Souza has,…
The Projectionist is a lovely elegy for the glory days of film exhibition, one that 2020 has brought into surprising focus. Since getting clean a few…
Black Box is a lazy, boring, and self-serious entry in the Welcome to the Blumhouse project. The second feature in Amazon’s Welcome to the Blumhouse film series,…
The Lie is a generic, inauspicious inauguration for Amazon’s Welcome to the Blumhouse collaboration. Just in time for Halloween, uber-producer Jason Blum (and his Blumhouse Pictures)…
Time From the western to the road movie, the legacy of the climactic homecoming looms large in American cinema, which is everywhere peopled by vagrants…
All In: The Fight for American Democracy is the kind of political documentary that provides a slick, bland overview of its particular issue without leaving…
Despite the formidable presence of Angela Bettis, 12 Hour Shift is a half-assed and visionless throwaway. 2002 was a breakout year for actress Angela Bettis, as she…
Possessor is an artfully ultra-violent and surprisingly empathetic mash-up of futuristic and retro genre influences. In Brandon Cronenberg’s debut film Antiviral, there’s a line of dialogue that…
Atarrabi and Mikelats A late-blooming filmmaker with admirably catholic interests, increasingly Catholic tendencies, and a rather revanchist reputation, Eugène Green, not unlike Éric Rohmer before…
After three title cards – “DOG STAR MAN,” “BY BRAKHAGE,” “PRELUDE” – written in an esoteric font, we spend nearly a full minute with a…
Mangrove Steve McQueen has spent the last decade making films that are quite decidedly about America, creating a body of work in the process that…
The Glorias is shallow hagiography that fails to complicate the fascinating person it seeks to showcase. In July, Harper’s Magazine published “A Letter on Justice and…
Lovers Rock Steve McQueen has always been a fine purveyor of potentially rich and powerful narratives, but he’s been much less consistent as their steward.…
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…
Sorkin is as unsubtle as ever, but the high dramatics and contemporaneous relevance of The Trial of the Chicago 7 make for a nice fit with…
Kajillionaire is both July’s most restrained and most maudlin work to date There’s no denying that Miranda July’s particular idiosyncrasy shares DNA with a number of…
The fall festival season has looked far different this year, limited both in its ability to exhibit films and in the breadth of selection available.…