Reviews
VERMIGLIO Review: Spellbinding WWII Rural Family Saga
Directed by Maura Delpero, Italy's Academy Awards-shortlisted International Feature is restrained, yet intricate.
THE BRUTALIST Review: Big Canvas, Real Intimacy, Human Grace
Brady Corbet directs; Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce and Joe Alwyn star.
MUFASA: THE LION KING Review: Barry Jenkins Brings His Indie Auteur Cred to Disney's Beloved Property
When Disney tapped filmmaker Jon Favreau (The Jungle Book, Chef, Elf) to direct a computer-animated remake of its 1994 classic, The Lion King, it was met with of raised eyebrows, minot irritation, and a shedload’s worth of doubt, but the...
EMILIA PÉREZ Review: A Pop Crime Musical Fantasia, Dominated by Women
French veteran helmer Jacques Audiard blends crime, telenovela, and musical into a genre-twisting fable about transformation led by Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, and Selena Gomez.
8 1/2 Blu-ray Review: Return to a Work of Grand Wonder
That should probably read: one of Federico Fellini's masterpieces. The fact that he followed La Dolce Vita merely a year later with 8 1/2 puts the Italian auteur in a rarefied group of filmmakers who have pulled off a one-two...
GALAXY QUEST 4K Review: Shining in Mighty UHD
Calling everyone in sci-fi movie fandom! Paramount has recently released the intergalactic 1999 comedy, Galaxy Quest, on 4K for the film’s 25th anniversary. Directed by Dean Parisot (Bill & Ted Face the Music, RED 2) this film is still every...
RESYNATOR Review: Rather Amazing and Completely Fascinating
Alison Tavel's documentary about her father's invention of a revolutionary musical instrument is a compelling watch and even better than I had hoped.
NICKEL BOYS Review: Important Story, POV Troubles
Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs, and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor star in director RaMell Ross' adaptation of Colson Whitehead's prize-winning novel.
KRAVEN THE HUNTER Review: Sony's Marvel-Adjacent Superhero-verse Goes Out With a Whimper
On purpose or not, everything eventually comes to an end, up to and including ill-conceived, poorly received, commercially unsuccessful series, franchises, and so-called cinematic universes. For the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe), that day will surely come, likely sooner rather...
Dances With Films 2024 Review: ITCH! A Low-Budget Horror Banger From Bari Kang
A struggling widower and his daughter become trapped in his convenience store as a mysterious affliction ravages the world outside, but the danger turns out to be closer than he thinks in Bari Kang's debut feature, Itch! Still reeling from...
EASTERN CONDORS Blu-ray Review: A Love Letter to Sammo Hung
Criterion's new 2K release serves as a delightful intro course to the stunt filmmaker's career.
SEPTEMBER 5 Review: Narrow Focus Hobbles True-Life Suspense-Thriller
Peter Sarsgard and John Magaro lead the ensemble cast in a tense recreation of the terrorist attack during the Olympics in 1972, directed by Tim Fehlbaum.
Imagine 2024 Review: MI BESTIA
It's almost funny how well puberty and horror mix, especially for women. It's not just bodies and moods that change with hormones, but also the behavior of everyone else. Some see an innocent cherub changing into a possible sexual conquest,...
BLACK DOVES Review: Killers Like Us
Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw star in a Netflix spy thriller with similarities to Peacock's 'The Day of the Jackal' and Paramount Plus' 'Lioness.'
A COMPLETE UNKNOWN Review: The Coles Notes of Bob Dylan
It's not surprising that there is a probable audience for a biopic on Bob Dylan, America's greatest folk singer/songwriter, a true living legend who has released over 50 albums, and is still going strong, doing tour at the venerable age...
THE END Review: A Song For the Discordant Last
Perhaps because we feel, more so than ever, at the edge of a possible fall of civilzation as we know it, the destruction of the environment to the point of unsustainability, but likely many of us have thought about (either...
CREATURE COMMANDOS Review: Blood, More Blood, and a Little Sex, As Expected
James Gunn's new animated series is now streaming on Max.
NIGHTBITCH Review: Amy Adams Elevates An Otherwise Underwritten Script
Inarguably one of the most talented, hard-working, and almost as importantly, most popular performers of her generation, Amy Adams, has yet to win an Academy Award. As her six (and counting) Oscar nods attest, however, it's not for lack of...
SEPARATED Review: The Past Is Prologue on US Immigration Policy
In the first half of the first Trump administration, several thousand children were forcibly separated from their parents in a ‘zero-tolerance’ deterrence policy that was cynically designed to discourage Latin American migrants from seeking entry into the United States of...
IT'S NOT ME Review: The Best Cinematic Self-Portrait One Could Wish For
Filmmaker Leos Carax is embracing Godard again more openly, for the benefit of composing a dense, visually sumptuous self-portrait.
