Film Review: War for the Planet of the Apes Might Be the Boldest and Bleakest Apes Movie
One of the most interesting things to watch over the course of the three most recent Planet of the Apes films has been the shift in focus. Rise of the […]
Film Review: The Journey, Truth Buried in Artificiality
I learned something new while watching director Nick (Killing Bono) Hamm’s The Journey: there’s poetic license and then there’s “This story images that journey.” In other words, this isn’t what […]
Film Review: Errol Morris Masterfully Returns in The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography
The latest work from master documentarian Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War) is meant to mark the end of an era of sorts. Specifically, it’s the […]
Film Review: The Sea Digs Deep to Show the Inner Workings of Grief
In the last couple of years, there have been a fair number of films that have impressively and respectfully dealt with the subjects of grief and loss—more specifically, they deal […]
Film Review: Lost In Paris, Breathtakingly Whimsical
In the last 12 years or so, the married Brussels, Belgian filmmaking and performing couple Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon have been making some of the strangest and funniest comedies […]
Film Review – We Just Hit the Jackpot With Spider-Man: Homecoming
Spider-Man was always my guy. By the time I discovered him in junior high school, the comic book Peter Parker was already in college, but I dug back through his […]
Film Review: Blessed With A Glorious 4K Restoration, Maurice is a Haunting Portrait of Victorian Gay Life
I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for the mid-1980s to early 1990s films of director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant—from The Bostonians in 1984 to The […]
Film Review: There’s Something Hopeful and Endearing about The Ornithologist
One never quite knows what to expect from the great Portuguese writer-director João Pedro Rodrigues (The Last Time I Saw Macao, To Die Like A Man), but his latest, The […]
Film Review: Based in Chicago, The Big Sick is Equally Heartwarming and Heartbreaking
The first thing you notice about the romantic tragicomedy The Big Sick is how conventionally it begins. If you don’t know where it’s going—or figure it out from the title—the […]
Film Review: Despicable Me 3 is Disarmingly Electric
Some animation features only have to answer one question: Do they make you laugh? Another one might be: Do they entertain you? And for the most part, I seem to […]
Film Review: Sofia Coppola’s Latest, The Beguiled, Gazes Subtly at Desire
I’m not going to get into another discussion about how frustrating it is when a filmmaker remakes a well-regarded film, and then all people do after they watch it is […]
TV Review: Season 3 of Fargo Invokes a Conflicting Sense of Happiness and Fear
“Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then I’ll begin.” Have you ever listened to Peter and the Wolf? Written by Sergei Prokofiev in 1936, Peter and the Wolf is a musical […]