Monster is a messy, crude, and politically flaccid throwaway flick that probably should have just stayed on the shelf. Premiering at Sundance in 2018 to no real buzz, Anthony Mandler’s Monster proceeded to sit on the shelf for several years before Netflix plucked it from…
While The Mitchells vs. the Machines doesn’t live up to obvious touchstone The Incredibles, it rides its own humorous and referential wavelength to mild success. While less an homage to superhuman wisdom and superheroic strength than its gung-ho title may imply, The Mitchells vs. the…
Things Heard and Seen might not thrill horror purists, but its terror-flecked study of domesticity and religion both recalls genre giants and remains mostly fresh. According to Shari Springer Berman, who co-directed Netflix’s newest adaption, Things Heard and Seen, alongside her husband Robert Pulcini,…
The Disciple‘s diptych structure creates a mature, nuanced portrait of the weight of personal and professional compromise. Sharad Nerulkar — the titular disciple in Chaitanya Tamhane’s sophomore feature — is, by most accounts, unexceptional. He’s devoted his life to archiving, preserving, and, most importantly…
Stowaway suffers from a contrived script and poor character-building, but works considerably better when maximizing its budget in service of action spectacle. A three-person mission to Mars, one in which every detail down to the grammage of coffee mugs has been accounted for, discovers…
Ride or Die is overlong, fails to believably sell its central relationship, and ill-advisedly resolves with a bit male gaze exploitation. Whatever the many other faults of Ryuichi Hiroki’s latest feature Ride or Die, it certainly can’t be accused of not practicing truth in…
Night in Paradise scans like any number of slow-burn gangster flicks, but suffers for lack of originality in both its action and drama. Park Hoon-jung’s Night in Paradise does little to differentiate itself from other gangster movies, especially others made in Korea like Park’s…
Thunder Force is yet another high-concept comedy collab between McCarthy and Falcone that fails at, well, being funny. On its surface, a film like Thunder Force holds promise. An original superhero concept in the present climate is a rare thing, but one that is…
Mamade Claude isn’t much more than shallow period dress-up and empty provocation. Set, for the most part, in the final tumultuous years of the Swinging Sixties, Sylvie Verheyde’s Madame Claude follows the life and career of one of the most infamous French icons of…
Concrete Cowboy features a pair of solid performances and a sleek visual design, but suffers under the weight of its paint-by-numbers approach to narrative. Set in the real-life world of Philadelphia’s Black cowboys, Ricky Staub’s Concrete Cowboy tells the story of Cole (Caleb McLaughlin),…
