As February comes to a close, we’re back with more new reviews of this month’s latest releases. Here you’ll find our thoughts on everything from big entries like The Monkey, Captain America…
Inland Empire is to Mulholland Drive how Twin Peaks: The Return is to the first two seasons of Twin Peaks — a film/TV series about…
Million Dollar Baby might open abruptly onto a brightly lit boxing ring, with two men contained in its boundaries and loudly grunting as they vigorously…
In the Mouth In the Mouth, the sophomore feature from Cory Santilli (Saul at Night, 2019) is everything from a film noir to a prison…
It’s a sign of great writing when you can identify everything you love and hate about a character, but can’t decide whether you love or…
Coming-of-age movies are a dime a dozen, at this point practically an entire sub-genre of Sundance-approved indie calling cards. Which is perhaps why Henry Bernadet’s…
Alice-Heart optimistically envisions a world in which an aspiring writer’s dream of financial security through her art is still achievable — if unlikely. Combined with…
In the Mouth, the sophomore feature from Cory Santilli (Saul at Night, 2019) is everything from a film noir to a prison escape thriller to…
The title of Erica Xia-Hou’s stirring if conspicuous first feature is not a misprint: “banr,” translated and truncated from the Mandarin term for “partner,” serves…
Stardom is a morbid enterprise, and the life of its luminaries always has a tacit alliance with their expiration date. Often, fame intensifies upon death,…
Watching Fabrice-Ange Zaphiratos’ Blood Beat in 2025 is a wild sensory experience. It has the (ahem) beats of a slasher while boasting atmospheric sound design,…
In Oz Perkins’ The Monkey, a mechanical wind-up monkey that plays a drum (but don’t call it a toy) serves as a harbinger of death.…