Review: Serenity Serves Up Too Much Style and Not Enough Substance
This one might literally be too difficult to dissect even a bit without running the risk is confusing you or unintentionally ruining something. The truth is, I can hear the […]
Review: Filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski Follows Oscar Winner With Cold War, Another Work of Art
Cold War is the latest film from Polish filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski, follow-up to his Oscar-winning drama Ida. Like that deeply intimate story of a young nun discovering the truth of […]
Review: Sweet, Intimate The Joneses A Vital Chronicle of Trans Life
Filmed over five years by director Moby Longinotto, The Joneses is a very different but no less vital take on transgender men and women living in America. While many of the recent […]
Review: Harrowing Of Fathers And Sons Shouldn’t Exist; Must Be Seen
Almost from its first frames, director Talal Derki’s (The Return to Homs) latest, Of Fathers and Sons, feels like a movie that shouldn’t exist. The filmmaker spent two years pretending to be […]
Review: Despite a Strong Start and High Expectations, Glass Cracks Under Pressure
I’m not going to go through the career peaks and valleys of writer/director M. Night Shyamalan, but I will say that I’ve long held that his 2000 film Unbreakable is among his […]
Review: El Angel Chronicles a Charming, Disturbing Killer in 1970s Argentina
True crime stories are big business. Since the success of the blockbuster podcast Serial, seemingly every producer, writer and director in any medium is looking for the next big crime […]
Review: Nicole Kidman Transforms in Karen Kusama’s Destroyer
Nicole Kidman is having quite a moment. She started 2018 on a high note, with Emmy wins for her contributions to the HBO series “Big Little Lies,” and just kept […]
Review: Two Sharp Performances Create Comedy Magic in Stan & Ollie
In an odd sort of way, Stan & Ollie, a film that covers the later-period career of film stars Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, suffers from some of the same shortcomings […]
Review: One Man’s Struggle With Sexual Identity in The Sunday Sessions
What I thought might be a documentary companion piece to last year’s thought-provoking Boy Erased, about the abhorrent practice of teen gay conversion therapy, turns out to be a wholly different […]
Review: The House That Jack Built Is A Character Study Sans Morality
As often as writer-director Lars von Trier has made films about despicable people, there has almost always existed a kind of twisted morality about each of them that made even […]
Review: Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart as an Odd Couple in The Upside
Present political climate not withstanding, we live in a fairly sophisticated society where we shouldn’t have to soft-pedal the truth about assisting the disabled via a movie with comedy, just […]
Review: Heart-Wrenching Capernaum Is Essential, If Difficult, Viewing
At the center of Capernaum, the latest film from Lebanese writer/director (and actor) Nadine Labaki (Where Do We Go Now?, Caramel), is one of the year’s best performances, and it’s delivered […]