RED ONE Review: Short on Christmas Cheer, Long on Holiday Schmear
If there was a Guinness World Record for the most jacked-up Santa in a big-budget, Hollywood-financed, holiday-themed action-comedy, Oscar winner J.K. Simmons (Whiplash) would win hands down and biceps curled for his committed portrayal of Father Christmas (aka, St. Nick,...
HERE Review: Tom Hanks, Robert Zemeckis Reunion Disappoints, Underwhelms
As a commercially oriented, artistically ambitious, innovation-embracing filmmaker, Robert Zemeckis (Death Becomes Her, the Back to the Future trilogy, Romancing the Stone) enjoyed an unparalleled pre-21st century career where box-office, critic-approved hits far outweighed the occasional misses or missteps. Awards...
A REAL PAIN Review: Dueling Character Studies on Unusual Road Trip
Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin star in a film written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg.
DON'T MOVE Review: Filler Thriller Doesn't Overstay Its Welcome
If you hike or bike in city, state, or federal parks regularly, you're likely familiar with a simple, potentially life-saving rule: Always, and we do mean always, leave information behind as to where you're hiking or biking and when you're...
MAGPIE Review: Daisy Ridley Delivers Knockout Performance in Marital Neo-Noir
When Daisy Ridley (Sometimes I Think About Dying, The Marsh King's Daughter, the Star Wars sequel trilogy) last appeared on screen in Young Woman and the Sea earlier this year, she was literally and figuratively swimming for her life. She's...
YOUR MONSTER Review: Effortlessly Smashing Genres, With Top Shelf Performances
Melissa Barrera, Tommy Dewey, Edmund Donovan, Kayla Foster, and Meghann Fahy star in a film directed by Caroline Lindy.
DIE ALONE Review: The Post-Apocalyptic Zombie Sub-Genre Gets a New, Fresh Spin
Every genre, sub-genre, and micro-genre eventually exhausts itself. But genres typically don't end; they expand, they evolve, and adapt, drawing on new ideas from outside the genre, mixing elements from other genres, and ultimately resurrect themselves, reborn on the ashes...
PIECE BY PIECE Review: Colorful, Engaging, Surface-Deep Bio-Doc
As a music producer, singer-songwriter/rapper, and serial entrepreneur with a career spanning three decades and two centuries, Pharrell Williams's genre-redefining contributions to American pop culture can't be fully explored, evaluated, or even quantified in a standard ninety-minute documentary. The bio-doc...
SATURDAY NIGHT Review: Jason Reitman Gives SNL the Hagiographic Treatment
For pre-cable or Internet audiences of a certain vintage and generation, the arrival of a late-night, weekly sketch comedy show, Saturday Night (Live), represented keenly subversive, self-aware, comically absurdist counter-cultural programming. It was the last, sustained gasp of one generation’s...
V/H/S BEYOND Review: Horror Anthology Goes to Outer Space and Back
If it’s October, it’s practically Halloween and if it’s Halloween, then it’s time for Shudder’s horror-themed found footage anthology, V/H/S, to make its yearly return to the streaming service. V/H/S Beyond, the fourth entry in as many years, its seventh...
SALEM'S LOT Review: King Adaptation Leans Heavily Into Greatest Hits Territory
For Stephen King’s Constant Readers, adaptations of his novels or short stories into film, TV movies, cable/streaming miniseries, or comics are almost as plentiful as King’s prolific output over the last 50 years. His first published novel, Carrie, became an...
WOLFS Review: Clooney and Pitt Renew Their Onscreen Bromance in Breezy, Disposable Action-Comedy
Closer to the end of their feted, award-winning careers than the beginning, George Clooney and Brad Pitt, longtime, if not lifelong, friends, Oscar winners (Syriana and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood …, respectively), reunite once again for writer-director Jon...
NEVER LET GO Review: Halle Berry Lends Her Oscar-Winning Bonafides to Post-Apocalyptic Thriller
A founding member of the “New Extremity” movement that brought French horror filmmakers to the attention of international audiences in the early oughts, writer-director Alexandre Aja (Oxygen, The 9th Life of Louis Drax, Haute Tension) parlayed his fearless, uncompromising approach...
IN THE SUMMERS Review: A Man and His Daughters
It’s not being provocative — at least not intentionally — to suggest families, biological and otherwise, can seriously f*ck you up. Parents can fail their children. Children can fail their parents. Whether realistic or the opposite, expectations in either direction...
SUPER/MAN: THE CHRISTOPHER REEVE STORY Review: Deeply Moving Portrait of the Actor Behind the Superhero
For Gen X’ers and Millennials, Superman in live-action form started and ended with Christopher Reeve. Across four films and a decade (1978-1987), Reeve embodied Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s Depression-era, comic-book creation, a secular savior, a super-powered alien from a...
A DIFFERENT MAN Review: Unmoored Wish Fulfillment As Horror
Sebastian Stan, Adam Pearson, and Renate Reinsve star in director Aaron Schimberg's newest film.
TRANSFORMERS ONE Review: Workers Rights, Class Struggle, Robot Revolution
Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry lead the voice cast for director Josh Cooley's animated prequel.
MY OLD ASS Review: Coming of Age By Talking to Yourself
Aubrey Plaza and Maisy Stella star in Megan Park's rueful comedy.
REBEL RIDGE Review: Timely, Topical Suspense-Thriller
Directed by Jeremy Saulnier and now streaming on Netflix, the film stars Aaron Pierre, Don Johnson, and AnnaSophia Robb.
BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE Review: Back From the Dead, Demented and Delightful
Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder and Jenna Ortega star in Time Burton's worthy, worthwhile sequel.
