Writing on the difficulties of representing addiction, Leslie Jamison notes that the process of sobriety is seen as a “tedious addendum” to the riveting blaze…
It wouldn’t be unfair to observe that plenty of indie films today seem more concerned with the representative modes of filmmaking and storytelling than anything…
More exasperating than the woebegone premise of Olivia West Lloyd’s feature debut is the experience of actually watching it all unfold. The film limps along,…
It’s common nowadays to praise “late style,” those works by great auteurs that find aged artists working familiar ground and exploring their obsessions with whatever…
Rebecca Miller’s films often find their core humanity in their characters’ dysfunction: motional tumult, isolation and enmeshment, neuroses and quirky pathologies, all swirling in a…
For centuries, humanity has found ways to outsource certain aspects of childbirth, but these advances were mostly limited to wet nurses, surrogate pregnancies, and, later,…
Across diverse forms of media, artists have devised various modes of depicting oppression. Watching Clement Virgo’s stirring feature Brother, it’s the smallness of the characters…
It might seem trite to begin a film review with a quote, but we live in a world of clichés and can only outrun our…
Arriving just 70 seconds into the film, the inciting incident of Damián David Szifron’s To Catch a Killer might break some kind of informal record…
“I would do anything for my children,” says Jess (Michelle Monaghan), a phrase she repeats like a mantra that gradually takes on a more sinister…
Alone Together is but the latest reminder that Covid-inspired relationship tales reached their expiration date long ago. Relationship dramas revolving around the Covid pandemic and…
The Road to Galena delivers little more than reductive bumpkin caricatures and well-trod narrative arcs. The Road to Galena, the feature debut from writer-director Joe…
Gone in the Night is a slog undone by its own structural conceit, confining its compelling material to flashbacks and riding a wave of dull inertia…
Wyrm suffers from an imbalance between its two halves, but is otherwise emotionally astute and earns the surreal world it conjures with careful, deeply considered world-building. …
The Forgiven doesn’t have any substance or style to elevate its tired tale of how rich people suck. “Rich people behaving badly” has become such an…
Black Site has obvious limitations that cap its ceiling, but as a DTV film in spirit if not in star power, it’s solid enough for target…
After watching Measure of Revenge, you’ll understand why the film bears no writer credit. The Bella Thorne paycheck train chugs along with Measure of Revenge, a…
Alice is but another well-intentioned but utterly ham-fisted confrontation of America’s original sin. While history books are quick to tell us that Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of…
The Desperate Hour is such a shrug of a film that it isn’t even worth considering the potentially offensive exploitation of its conceit. With The…
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…
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…