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It Ends With Us
(2024)
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Hannah Giorgis
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To young people who have become inured to the misery of modern life, there’s a seductive premise in these novels: Relentless suffering can give way to freedom if women want it badly enough. On-screen, performed by real people, it’s not as convincing.
Posted Aug 12, 2024
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Trap
(2024)
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Shirley Li
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Full of off-key, seemingly atonal beats that will likely alienate viewers hoping for more conventional horror-movie scares. Yet it also builds to a cohesive whole, and the movie’s peculiarity is gratifying at this stage in the director’s career.
Posted Aug 05, 2024
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NBC's Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony in IMAX
(2024)
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Spencer Kornhaber
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The energy was low, the pacing bizarre, and the execution patchy. Paris tried to project itself as a modern, inclusive hub of excitement -- but it mostly just seemed exhausted.
Posted Aug 02, 2024
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How to Come Alive with Norman Mailer
(2023)
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Gal Beckerman
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A need exists to find ways to productively depict the lives of deeply flawed and even morally repugnant artists. With this film, Zimbalist has done just that by embracing ambivalence.
Posted Jul 24, 2024
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Deadpool & Wolverine
(2024)
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David Sims
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For viewers who spend a lot of their time online, soaking up the discourse generated by insider-fan accounts and message boards, all of this will seem warmly familiar. But good luck if you’re coming in with no prior knowledge.
Posted Jul 24, 2024
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Twisters
(2024)
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David Sims
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In Twisters, the action is the juice, and the bigger and louder your viewing experience, the better.
Posted Jul 18, 2024
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Sorry/Not Sorry
(2023)
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Sophie Gilbert
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Sorry/Not Sorry skates over much of this recent history without really analyzing it.
Posted Jul 15, 2024
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Fly Me to the Moon
(2024)
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Shirley Li
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The film doesn’t offer much wisdom about how we should deal with our growing unreality, but it is a charming diversion. In a way, its very shallowness is the point.
Posted Jul 12, 2024
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Longlegs
(2024)
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David Sims
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Rather than dumping a bunch of inexplicably spooky stuff into the audience’s lap, Perkins presents a perspective that strikes me as deeply personal.
Posted Jul 11, 2024
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MaXXXine
(2024)
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David Sims
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MaXXXine has a bitchin’ soundtrack; lots of sultry, De Palma–inspired long shots; and a very engaging and salty performance from Goth at its center. It’s fun, but it’s unavoidably a bit of a style exercise, albeit a very good one.
Posted Jul 02, 2024
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Last Summer
(2023)
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Sophie Gilbert
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Last Summer is my favorite of Breillat’s movies to date, because its allegiance to aesthetics collides with its story in a way that feels bracingly confrontational and unrepentant.
Posted Jul 01, 2024
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Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1
(2024)
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David Sims
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Horizon might not be “watchable” in the most traditional sense of the word, but it’s audacious enough that I’ll be heading back for more in [Chapter 2], in anticipation of what might happen when all of these tales hopefully, eventually, collide.
Posted Jun 28, 2024
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Kinds of Kindness
(2024)
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David Sims
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I enjoyed plenty of its nearly three-hour run time, suffered through other parts, and was practically praying for the credits by the end. Most of all, I salute Lanthimos for getting back to his freaky roots, only this time on American soil.
Posted Jun 21, 2024
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Janet Planet
(2023)
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David Sims
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What impressed me most about Janet Planet is what a work of cinema it is, visually alive and inventive even with a small budget and fairly languid plotting pace.
Posted Jun 20, 2024
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Inside Out 2
(2024)
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David Sims
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I got enough laughs out of the new emotions to essentially enjoy Inside Out 2. But although it’s often charming and relatable, it’s a letdown when you consider the heights such a project could reach.
Posted Jun 13, 2024
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In a Violent Nature
(2024)
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David Sims
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Nash wants the viewer to engage with the pure terror of what’s going on just as much as he wants them to sit in the tedium of it. The result is a film as worthy as its predecessors - and one of the most unsettling examples of the genre I’ve seen in years.
Posted May 30, 2024
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Hit Man
(2023)
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David Sims
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The film’s spiral into romantic drama wouldn’t work without Powell and Arjona’s crackling chemistry. Arjona has pulled her weight in stale supporting roles in a few bad action movies, but this is a stunning star turn.
Posted May 28, 2024
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Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
(2024)
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Shirley Li
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A complex, contemplative, and sprawling picture that explores the price of holding on to your humanity in a world that argues against its very value. The result is a film that’s perhaps less propulsive than its predecessor but no less visceral to watch.
Posted May 23, 2024
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The Contestant
(2023)
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Sophie Gilbert
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What’s most remarkable about The Contestant now is how its subject managed to regain his faith in human nature, despite everything he endured.
Posted May 20, 2024
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Babes
(2024)
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Hannah Giorgis
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Babes isn’t perfect, but its refreshing candor still feels like an R-rated public service.
Posted May 20, 2024
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Challengers
(2024)
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David Sims
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It’s far more thrilling, and triumphant, than a simple tale of someone lifting a trophy, or love conquering all.
Posted Apr 23, 2024
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Monkey Man
(2024)
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Shirley Li
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A stylish thriller that’s also a cathartic unleashing of Patel as a performer and storyteller. With Monkey Man, he asserts himself as someone who can break the boundaries Hollywood typically establishes for actors like him.
Posted Apr 05, 2024
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Girls State
(2024)
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Shirley Li
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Girls State is much more than a gender-flipped version of the previous project. Instead, the film offers a sharp study of how a supposedly empowering environment can simultaneously inspire and limit aspiring female leaders.
Posted Apr 03, 2024
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Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
(2024)
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Shirley Li
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These films may be empty, but they can be strangely stimulating. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, however, is the MonsterVerse at its weakest: Its spectacle is even duller than its story, which is already nonsensical.
Posted Apr 01, 2024
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Immaculate
(2024)
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David Sims
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Immaculate, a horror film set in a convent, is a Sweeney showcase in the smartest possible way, devoting much of its running time to her wide-eyed, trembling visage as she encounters all kinds of demonic nastiness.
Posted Mar 22, 2024
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Civil War
(2024)
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David Sims
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Though Civil War is told with blockbuster oomph, it often feels as frustratingly elliptical as a much smaller movie. Even so, I left the theater quite exhilarated.
Posted Mar 15, 2024
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Love Lies Bleeding
(2024)
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David Sims
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Glass is not afraid of lingering on an open wound or dragging out hand-to-hand combat to the most gruesome conclusions. That willingness to shock sets Love Lies Bleeding apart from a lot of other neo-noirs, where cool, smoky restraint is the norm
Posted Mar 12, 2024
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Problemista
(2023)
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Shirley Li
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It’s a marvelous mixture of surrealism and social satire that depicts the American dream as a nightmare of bureaucracy and phone calls to customer service. There’s nothing more absurd, the film argues, than the mundane.
Posted Mar 05, 2024
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Dune: Part Two
(2024)
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David Sims
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Villeneuve’s film is a grand success, working on an even broader canvas than the first Dune -- but it’s tinged with deep mournfulness, a quality that sets it apart from its blockbuster contemporaries.
Posted Feb 28, 2024
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Drive-Away Dolls
(2024)
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David Sims
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Pointlessness is part of the charm. Running only 84 minutes long and stuffed with chaotic plot twists, Drive-Away Dolls is a perfect winter trifle.
Posted Feb 21, 2024
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Bob Marley: One Love
(2024)
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Hannah Giorgis
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His music and ideas—and all the people who helped usher them into this fractured world—deserve better.
Posted Feb 19, 2024
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This Is Me... Now: A Love Story
(2024)
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Spencer Kornhaber
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As in so many superhero movies, the overall effect is hyperactive yet deadened, causing the viewer’s gaze to bounce off the screen rather than be drawn into it.
Posted Feb 19, 2024
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Madame Web
(2024)
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David Sims
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I almost admire the sheer lack of effort on display in the acting, storytelling, and set pieces. To say that Johnson in particular phoned this performance in would be an insult to Alexander Graham Bell.
Posted Feb 19, 2024
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Grease
(1978)
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Betsy Carter
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Although Grease is pleasant enough summer fare, it has about as much bite or substance as white bread.
Posted Feb 08, 2024
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Godzilla Minus One
(2023)
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David Sims
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Godzilla himself takes up only a slim chunk of a run time largely devoted to people running around in awe and horror. That is why Godzilla Minus One is a great film rather than merely an impressive feat of monstrous visual effects.
Posted Feb 06, 2024
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4/5
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American Fiction
(2023)
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Clarisse Loughrey
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A funny, touching portrait of a man attempting to fine-tune his relationship with the world.
Posted Feb 01, 2024
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Argylle
(2024)
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David Sims
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If it ran a good deal shorter than its roomy two-hour-and-19-minute running time, it’d probably be an even easier recommendation -- but right now I’ll take fun, giddy action like this wherever I can get it.
Posted Feb 01, 2024
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Sasquatch Sunset
(2024)
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Shirley Li
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Call them crowd-upsetters -- films that highlight the value of the collective theatergoing experience by becoming exercises in perseverance. As I watched Sasquatch Sunset, I derived a sort of sick pleasure from seeing how people were reacting to it.
Posted Jan 30, 2024
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Anyone But You
(2023)
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David Sims
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Both leads are attractive, but their personal chemistry is nonexistent. Sweeney feels particularly uncalibrated for the film’s light, wacky tone, delivering every line with flattened portentousness even as she’s meant to be scatterbrained.
Posted Jan 23, 2024
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Society of the Snow
(2023)
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Shirley Li
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As a film that attempts to honor its victims while simultaneously offering graphic details, it both improves upon previous iterations of the material and exposes the limits of the story itself.
Posted Jan 17, 2024
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Mean Girls
(2024)
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Hannah Giorgis
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Along the way, it loses the bite of its cinematic predecessor. The result is a painfully self-aware pastiche that fails to capture the acerbic magnetism of the original movie, the campy charm of musicals, or the real talent of its young cast.
Posted Jan 12, 2024
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The Color Purple
(2023)
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Shirley Li
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This new version works well as a companion piece to the 1985 drama while, for the most part, standing alone as its own tear-jerking, exultant epic.
Posted Dec 29, 2023
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The Iron Claw
(2023)
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David Sims
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It is the kind of big, weepy, macho film that just doesn’t get made much anymore, a soaring power ballad that should prompt a lot of loud sniffling in the theater.
Posted Dec 20, 2023
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Wonka
(2023)
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David Sims
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Wonka is saccharine, yes, but if you’re going to indulge, it’s better to be in the hands of a master confectioner.
Posted Dec 18, 2023
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The Disappearance of Shere Hite
(2023)
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Hannah Giorgis
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Though its primary focus is Hite, who died in 2020, the documentary ends up making salient points about the precarity of feminist media across generations.
Posted Dec 05, 2023
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May December
(2023)
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Shirley Li
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Haynes has made a beautiful, terrible nesting doll of a film with a uniquely twisted core. Beneath the droll portrait of an actor’s obsession with her muse is an unsettling tale of what happens when people refuse to tell the truth.
Posted Dec 01, 2023
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Maestro
(2023)
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David Sims
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[Cooper and Singer] seem less interested in digging through the details than in capturing a mood, putting the audience in the whizzy headspace of a man constantly overflowing with creative energy and usually struggling to find the best ways to channel it.
Posted Nov 30, 2023
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Napoleon
(2023)
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David Sims
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Scott has promised that an extended version will debut on Apple TV+ someday, but I think the abridged version works -- Napoleon gives viewers a quick sense of the man’s nervy vibe and then plunges them into the tremendous depths of his martial exploits.
Posted Nov 22, 2023
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The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes
(2023)
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Shirley Li
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"Ballad" may be bloated, but it understands that The Hunger Games, as a franchise, didn’t succeed because it had a clear political philosophy. It succeeded because it entertained.
Posted Nov 18, 2023
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Next Goal Wins
(2023)
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David Sims
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It’s undeniably the worst film Waititi has ever produced, a hash of lazy jokes and “random” humor centered on one of the most uncomfortable lead performances I’ve ever seen in a comedy.
Posted Nov 15, 2023
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