Enola Holmes is a cartoon. Or perhaps the problem is that it should have been. The film follows the title character (played by Stranger Things’ Millie Bobby Brown), Sherlock Holmes’ teenaged sister, as she attempts to solve the mystery of her missing mother and…
The Devil All the Time abandons any meaningful Southern Gothic tradition or thematic complexity in favor of base misery. Antonio Campos’ The Devil All the Time is nearly impossible to digest; it’s a film so tonally incoherent, so determined to rub the audience’s nose in miserable…
The Paramedic is the gleeful, glorious pulp-trash the world needs right now. New Spanish-language thriller The Paramedic wastes no time in establishing its title character, Angel (Mario Casas), as an unrepentant scumbag. Within the course of five minutes, he is seen stealing from his clients and…
Residue is a singular, important achievement, a work of shattering beauty and necessary discourse. Director Merawi Gerima was born into an impressive cinematic lineage. His father is Haile Gerima, a foundational member of the L.A. Rebellion, and at its best the younger Gerima’s feature debut,…
Cuties is an impressive, complex coming-of-age narrative and a profound refutation of the nonsensical controversy that has arisen around it. The hysteria surrounding Maïmouna Doucouré’s Cuties (Mignonnes) is, like many such controversies in the era of QAnon conspiracy theories, much ado about nothing. To…
I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a masterful and surprising adaptation from Charlie Kaufman, a work of towering humanism braced by an exquisitely disorienting aesthetic. I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Charlie Kaufman’s adaptation of Ian Reid’s novel of the same name, is an intensely…
Project Power keeps the maniac Neveldine/Taylor aesthetic alive and is another welcome Netflix foray into small-scale superhero entries. There’s a new designer drug on the streets — a glowing pill called Power that when ingested gives the user actual superpowers. The catch: it only lasts…
The Old Guard navigates familiar genre terrain but with enough punch to put the hetero white male actioner ethos on notice. Every big-budget action flick should be as effortlessly entertaining as The Old Guard. Written by Greg Rucka, adapted from his own comic book co-created…
There is more than a bit of irony to be found in the fact that the new Will Ferrell/Netflix comedy Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga is being released in 2020, the first year since the singing competition’s inception in 1956 that…
Olivier Assayas produced a stunningly idiosyncratic series of works in the 2010s, even by his typically eclectic standards. From the mammoth Carlos to the autobiographical Something in the Air to the cryptic chamber dramas Clouds of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper, Assayas seemed to be searching for new forms, new avenues…
