Rather than recalling Bahrani’s past strengths, The White Tiger only serves to draw out the director’s worst instincts. Filmmaker Ramin Bahrani has long focused on issues of class in his works, examining how the economic factors created by U.S. capitalist structures shape and subsequently…
The Dig is a gorgeous effort but entirely sidelines the fascinating psychological and emotional terrain implicit to its narrative. Every niche interest deserves its own movie. By this, I don’t just mean mere on-screen representation, but rather a film or series that really interrogates the…
Outside the Wire boasts enough requisite action fodder to keep things moving, but in failing to meaningfully develop any of its ideas, become little more than a rah-rah recruitment film. January has long been an annual dumping ground, giving studios a chance to quietly release…
Pieces of a Woman showcases a bravura if ostentatious initial quarter, but it’s all downhill from there as the film devolves into mere misery porn tropes. Director Kornél Mundruczó knows how to open a film (see the otherwise underwhelming White God, for example), and with…
With The Midnight Sky, George Clooney the director strikes again, delivering a bland, ugly film that is tedious and void of any emotional poignancy. George Clooney might be an A-list actor, but at this point in his career, it seems safe to say that…
Like Fences before it, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is another well-intention August Wilson adaptation that can’t seem to rise above its stagy origins. Adapted from the 1982 stage play by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a film that stubbornly refuses to shake its…
The Prom doesn’t offer much in the way of insight or novelty, but its glitz-and-glitter styling is a welcome confection at the end of 2020. Ryan Murphy’s name has become so synonymous with small screen camp that his feature filmmaking career has been somewhat overlooked.…
Detention recommends director John Hsu’s future efforts, but this debut effort falls mostly short of the mark. John Hsu’s debut feature Detention isn’t so much a horror film with political undertones as it is a historical, political drama with brief flashes of horror imagery. Unfortunately,…
Mosul nails its action spectacle and kinetic foundation, but it is ultimately only able to conceive of its subject matter in war movie clichés. Yet another attempt at a topical, ripped-from-the-headlines war movie that wants to indulge in graphic, ultra-realistic combat while still framing its…
In Wonder is an unfortunately empty, depthless bit of underwhelming, barely cinematic fan service. Who is Shawn Mendes? For anyone over the age of 25, that question is probably quite literal; for the 22-year-old Canadian pop singer/songwriter’s core fan base, comprised mostly of teen and…
