Familiarity abounds in The Instigators, but something in the formula feels off. Inauspiciously being released on Apple TV+ after a mostly perfunctory, one-week theatrical release, the…
On paper, a recently discovered 1964 interview between author and journalist Richard Meryman and Elizabeth Taylor, then at the absolute height of her fame and…
Have you ever watched one of Roland Emmerich’s appreciably bonkers epics and thought to yourself: “What if this had way less action, looked even cheaper,…
If anything is to be said of Zack Snyder, it’s that he has never met a director’s cut he didn’t like, with films such as…
People tend to fall into two camps when asked about Everest: those who want to climb it, whether that be a serious goal or more…
At their core, and among other things, great documentaries draw viewers in by focusing on compelling subjects and structuring their stories in captivating ways. Whether…
Without further context, one could be forgiven for conflating Skywalkers: A Love Story with yet another Star Wars spinoff. Donning the Jedi’s patronymic and draped…
The documentarian’s camera — more often than not — observes, investigates, and deliberates in media res. The past, then, is either recounted through a detached…
The first Beverly Hills Cop movie turns 40 this year, and it’s hard to overstate just how electric that movie is even today, a then-mostly-novel…
Richard LaGravenese’s (P.S. I Love You) new Netflix rom-com A Family Affair — which offers viewers an easy-sell reunion for A-listers Nicole Kidman and Zac…
American rock climbing has come a long way from its dirtbag origins in the ’70s and ’80s, and not just because it’s now an Olympic…
How does one approach a film that reveals everything about itself in its opening sequence? Do we applaud its ability to summarize its themes succinctly?…
If you watch Trigger Warning, Netflix’s latest big-budget action movie, with captions turned on, you may notice the phrase “terrorist, in Arabic” in the film’s…
Asif Kapadia has had an enviably diverse career as a director, but he’s established himself over the last 15 years — across three films, in…
Given the baffling and total absence of any marketing from Netflix, the fact that cult movie mainstay Takashi Miike made his return to the genre…
A good animal attack movie doesn’t need to overstuff its checklist. Basically, all the film needs to do is trap a bunch of folks in…
If one is to survey a slate of HBO’s flagship programming — say, The Sopranos, Succession, Boardwalk Empire, Game of Thrones, and now House of…
Am I OK?, the directorial debut of Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allynne, is a simple, mostly familiar coming-out story that follows Lucy (Dakota Johnson), a…
With obituaries for theatrical filmgoing being filed on an almost weekly basis, it’s worthwhile to recall that we’re but six years removed from a phenomenon…
Adapted from a 2001 article published in Texas Monthly and very loosely inspired by the life of law enforcement personnel Gary Johnson, Richard Linklater’s Hit…