The moving Parallel Mothers puts on full display Almodovar’s facility with wrangling the controlled chaos of narrative into a coherent whole. If Pedro Almodóvar’s pandemic short…
The Tragedy of Macbeth is masterful in its fusing of the artificial and elemental, a bit of Shakespearean subterfuge that justifies this umpteenth take on the eponymous…
American Underdog is an inoffensive but utterly bland bit of hagiography, only slightly elevated by its surprising visual merit and an affable leading man. By all…
It’s impossible to replicate the essential newness of the original Matrix, but Resurrections is another deeply idiosyncratic huge swing that’s destined to be underappreciated for the near future.…
Licorice Pizza continues Anderson’s interest in how personal histories are assimilated into myth, and largely does so compellingly, but ultimately still feels more lopsided than the…
The Velvet Queen is a modern marvel, an unconventional nature documentary that understands and incorporates both the power of language and images. One can forgive most…
The Hating Game is indeed worthy of hate. The Hating Game was best-selling author Sally Thorne’s debut novel back in 2016, and if the Internet is…
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…
Death of a Telemarketer delivers some Lamorne Morris laughs but precious little else. Actor Lamorne Morris has made a career out of playing characters whose…
Someone should have buried The Gardener in the backyard. We’re in a veritable golden age of high-octane, low-budget DTV action flicks right now, with talented craftsmen like…
The End of Us is a marginally interesting pandemic document but an utter disaster of a rom-com styled portrait of a failed relationship. Those nostalgic for…
Cyrano is a mess, a shambles, a misfire, and also one of the most enjoyable films of the year. The glut of awards bait that…
Swan Song is a sleek, appealingly low-key sci-fi effort that angles more for emotional wallop than futurist noodling. Within the history of cinema, the subject of…
Death Valley is an underwhelming but mostly inoffensive bit of lightweight genre work, delivering a few moments and overcoming obvious budget limitations. As has been periodically mentioned…
No Way Home offers some genuinely playful noodling with Spider-Man’s cinematic legacy, even as it often stumbles in execution and suggests a muddled future for the MCU.…
The Tender Bar is a bland, clueless film that finds Clooney the director at this most narcotized. While his career in front of the camera has…
Mother/Android isn’t anything more than another generic sci-fi copycat built from the spare parts of better flicks. Even 40-odd years on, Ridley Scott’s dual sci-fi touchstones…
The Hand of God is a softer but no more subdued effort from Sorrentino, still rife with flourish but with a more personal core than ever…
There’s plenty to admire in The Novice, but a surfeit of ambition and an overreliance on certain aggressive formal qualities bogs down its execution. Drawing…
The Scary of Sixty-First is an incredibly engaging piece of camp in the narrative form of classic paranoia-thrillers. Recently, while on my way to lunch with…
Anyone showing up to The Housewives of the North Pole for some bad behavior shenanigans is going to be sorely disappointed. The Housewives of the North Pole,…