In his 1978 book Orientalism, historian and cultural critic Edward Said writes: “Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not…
Bloody Hell boasts obvious talent both behind and in front of the camera, but is belabored by its stale tics and tonal indecision. As film festivals…
Preparations is a major discovery, its distinct character recalling nothing less than the works of Abbas Kiarostami, Christian Petzold, and Krzysztof Kieślowski. Preparations to Be Together…
Atlantis is an unsettling, poignant study of the casual violence that both informs the past and estimates the future. With Atlantis, director Valentyn Vasyanovych (also editor…
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…
Locked Down wants to be the film of this pandemic moment but is instead tiresomely repetitive, tonally chaotic, and already outdated. A January 6th puff piece…
Imagine my surprise when a cursory online search revealed that virtually no critic of note has written a modern reassessment of the 1986 serial-killer-road-movie cum…
Shadow in the Cloud holds some promise in its early genre goings, but the second half reveals an unfortunate dearth of ideas and charm. It’s never…
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…
A deeply idiosyncratic survey of 20th-century political and social mores, director Pietro Marcello’s Martin Eden transplants Jack London’s 1909 novel from the American West Coast…
News of the World is a film of dangerously naïve messaging, erratic pacing, limited stakes, and little formal or technical craft to otherwise distract from…
Hunter Hunter begins as a simple look at a family living off-the-grid, but quickly develops into a gory thriller that isn’t for the faint of heart.…
Greenland does well to focus on its human center rather than CGI spectacle, but its pleasures remain mostly minor. The disaster film is a genre as…
Songbird is a well-directed but otherwise bland, opportunistic bit of pablum. The press materials for the new COVID thriller Songbird spill a lot of ink on…
Don’t Click is an outdated, ineptly made film in the running for Worst of the Year honors. In 1997, Michael Haneke unleashed Funny Games onto an…
Anything for Jackson successfully manages the tricky balancing act of melding early comedy into outright terror. As festival season has gone mostly digital this year, we…
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…
Make Up brings a welcome horror twinge and unsettling tenor to an otherwise familiar kitchen sink drama. There’s no shortage of coming-of-age stories out there, so…
Vanguard worships at the feet of CGI and grievously wrongs the past and present of action cinema in the process. Stanley Tong was at best a…
His House is a formally confident and unsettling debut that fully impresses even as it falls just short of greatness. The new Netflix horror film His…