Celebrated French director François Ozon (The New Girlfriend, Swimming Pool, Under the Sand) turns his attention briefly away from France, toward a small town in post-World War I Germany, focusing on a […]
Film Review: Frantz, Quietly Devastating
Film Review: Their Finest, A Charming Tale of Filmmaking in the Throes of War
A great companion piece to the recently released Netflix doc series Five Came Back, about American filmmakers’ role during World War II, Their Finest takes a look at how the British film […]
Film Review: Colossal, A Smart and Wildly Imaginative Giant Monster Movie
I love the way the mind of writer-director Nacho Vigalondo works. He selects a genre that he clearly loves and wonders “What if we took the tropes of this type of film […]
Film Review: The Fate of the Furious, Stuck in Second Gear
So what did I learn from The Fate of the Furious (installment eight of The Fast and the Furious series, in case you’re counting, which you know you are)? When you run […]
Film Review: The Ticket, Dan Stevens Leads a Challenging Yet Smartly Written Morality Tale
In this truly odd sophomore effort from director Ido Fluk (2011’s Never Too Late), we meet James (Dan Stevens, currently playing the Beast in Beauty and the Beast), a man who has […]
Film Review – Smurfs: The Lost Village, An Attempted Feminist Take on a Cartoon Classic
Now hear me out before you judge. This new, fully animated Smurfs movie is nothing like the two previous, mostly live-action films (The Smurfs, The Smurfs 2). If anything, Smurfs: The Lost […]
Film Review: Gifted, What is Best For A Child Prodigy?
The concept of the new film from director Marc Webb (500 Days of Summer) seems deceptively simple but as Tom Flynn’s deft screenplay (plucked from the 2014 blacklist) scratches the surface, things […]
Film Review: Going In Style, Zach Braff’s Latest Is An Underwritten Mess
Look, there’s no getting around the fact that when you bring together three of the classiest, most recognizable older actors currently working (Oscar winners all, I should add), there’s going to be […]
Film Review: Your Name, An Absolute Masterpiece
Before we get started I should warn you that this review contains potential spoilers. Animation’s latest living master is Japan’s Makoto Shinkai (The Garden of Words), who is frequently (if not quite […]
Film Review: Mr. Gaga, A Magnetic Look at a Provocative Genius
There are certainly great performers and choreographers in the world of dance, but Israel’s Ohad Naharin, artistic director of the Batsheva Dance Company, manages to turn dance into an aggressive, inflammatory, provocative, […]
Film Review: The Boss Baby – Not Great But Solid Enough
Sometimes the idea for an animated film is so out there that it actually works in an absurdist way. And in the world we’re living in right now, the idea of a […]
Film Review: The Zookeeper’s Wife, An Important Story of Nazi Resistance
There came a point while watching The Zookeeper’s Wife where a nagging but fundamental question kept tapping at my brain. The Polish married couple at the center of the Holocaust-era drama from […]
