Raymond and Ray, while patiently contemplative, plays it too safe as a dramedy of life’s joys and sorrows. The story of estranged siblings in search of a lost or deceased parent who gradually reunite along the way should be very familiar to most viewers, for it’s a narrative…
Ticket to Paradise is an entirely charmless rom-com fronted by a poisonous couple and sleepwalking its way through bland genre tropes. How hard could it possibly be to make an amusing enough romantic comedy fueled by two gigantic movie stars with historical chemistry? Ask Ol Parker, the writer and…
Peter Hedges brings his typical schtick to The Same Storm, getting off to a rocky start but ultimately getting somewhere heartwarming enough. Is there any filmmaker working today as uncool as Peter Hedges? The writer-director has made a career out of crafting tales of familial strife so earnest in…
Ballerini’s latest leans into her strength as a writer, and builds upon her previous works in a welcome fashion. Subject to Change is country singer-songwriter Kelsea Ballerini’s fourth album, and likely her best yet. It follows 2020’s kelsea, which was too often bogged down by clichés with tracks…
Decision to Leave piles on the plot twists, but never loses its essential noir romance vibe. Tang Wei remains one of the great actresses of our time, here building another variation on the femme fatale role, one entirely different from the one she played in Bi Gan’s 2018 Long…
Summit Fever could have climbed to better heights, but it’s base-level take leaves it just a cheesy, overlong mess. With rock-climbing films steadily entering the mainstream over the past few years, it was only a matter of time before the flurry of prestige entries fizzled into B-movie territory.…
Stars at Noon is the perfect externalization of a lovers-on-the-run experience, a fitting send-up to its source material. A gnarled, lightbulb-spotted, two-dimensional plastic facsimile of a red palm tree in an empty plaza and a close-up of Margaret Qualley’s face are the introductory images of Claire Denis’ Stars At…
The Swimmer is yet another skin-thin film about gay men that is unfortunately more interested in titillation than characterization. The Israeli gay coming-of-age drama The Swimmer arrives one week after Bros, a big-budget studio comedy that attempted to woo mainstream audiences by taking the framework of your basic romantic…
Walk Up Walk Up is Hong Sang-soo’s trickiest film since The Day After (2017), and his most intricately structured effort since The Day He Arrives (2012). With the former it shares lead actor Kwon Haehyo, who here plays a middle-aged director named Byung-soo. With the latter it shares…
Bros is a would be rom-com lacking in comedy, chemistry, and untroubled rhetoric on gay culture. First off, the good news: director/co-writer Nicholas Stoller’s Bros is a gay romantic comedy that avoids anything resembling the familiar narrative arcs of tragedy or the pitfalls of coming out, and features a…
Dead for a Dollar is another failed Western outing from Walter Hill, a well-intentioned but visually shoddy film that sags whenever its action disappears. After his previous excursion into the genre, 1995’s Wild Bill, drew a mixed response, legendary filmmaker Walter Hill once again takes aim at the Western…
A fluff-piece out two months before its prime time, About Fate is a lukewarm entry into the holiday rom-com catalog. For a romantic comedy, About Fate is about as generic a title as they come, and it certainly matches the film that follows, a predictable slice of milquetoast pap…
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 into some DVD bargain bin assuming that those still exist by the time this sentence finishes. In other words, while the title of…
Winter Boy Those about to eulogize reach for poetry; for anyone, mourning periods commingle, confuse, and unpredictably change one’s experience of time. But in Christophe Honoré’s Winter Boy (La lycéen), the director applies a stripped-down approach. While his curatorial touches are still all over the playlist (‘80s new-wave…
The Whale Although The Whale is an adaptation of the 2012 stage play by MacArthur Fellowship-winner Samuel D. Hunter, the film tends to feel of a piece with director Darren Aronofsky’s peak “auteur era,” at least more than anything else he’s made in quite some time. In particular,…
Glass Onion Rian Johnson’s latest stab at Wes Anderson-does-Clue has a lesser cast, a more pandering script, and a wholly phony “Eat the Rich” political angle. Thankfully, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery also has the same sleuth from the first Knives Out, and Daniel Craig is just…
Confess, Fletch isn’t attempting much, but it lands as an amiable bit of diet-Soderbergh primed for a low-key weekend binge. We all complain about what movies belong in theaters and argue the idea that streaming is deleterious to the cinematic experience, but occasionally something comes along that seems destined…
Clerks III is a fans-only venture that’s sunk by a childishness devoid of wonder and poignant moments consistently undermined by self-mockery. In Arthur Penn’s 1967 Bonnie and Clyde, a single moment begat New Hollywood. Warren Beatty’s Clyde, panicking during a botched robbery, shoots the persistent bank manager, an innocent…
Padre Pio Disclaimer: It’s important to acknowledge the severity of the accusations of abuse made against both Shia LaBeouf and Asia Argento, and clarify that while some of the language used in this review might not do justice to the weight of these allegations, no word written here…
Huang Ji is among the last handful of Chinese directors to sneak through the portal distribution company dGenerate Films, the center of an important 2000s artistic nexus in Chinese cinema (also including Rotterdam & Locarno film festivals) that was able to facilitate an entry point for alternative and…