Based on a true story that went viral in a deep and revealing 2015 New York Magazine article, Hustlers takes a very specific story of former strippers building Read More

The final shot of Alejandro Landes’ Monos encapsulates everything that the film could have been but isn’t. A group of military troops have just flown over Read More

It Chapter Two can’t decide whether it wants to chase after Stephen King or Steven Spielberg. Sure, to a certain extent those two media monoliths occasionally cross Read More

The title Human Capital sounds like it should accompany a heavily researched social-issue documentary about the way that people have been turned into commodities. But Marc Read More

It’s hard enough to capture contemporary life in a low-budget movie, so attempting authentic period detail with very limited resources is always a dicey prospect. Writer-director Read More

The Blumhouse logo at the opening of Jacob Aaron Estes’ Don’t Let Go promises the potential for some creative budget-conscious thrills, but Don’t Let Go is Read More

They say there is no movie without the screenplay, and that’s absolutely true…but of course a film is made up of more elements than just the Read More

To criticize the humor in Good Boys for being juvenile seems sort of redundant, since the whole point of the movie is to represent the perspective Read More

If you’ve ever read anything by Thomas Hardy, you’ll readily recognize the setting of William McGregor’s Gwen. Most of the film’s action takes place amid a Read More

There may not (yet) be a Bruce Springsteen jukebox musical on Broadway, but filmmaker Gurinder Chadha makes a pretty good case for one with her exuberant Read More

The name Luce is packed with polarizing implications. It means “light” in Italian, but it is also derived from a particular type of Pike fish that Read More

The job of Brendan Steere’s The VelociPastor is pretty much accomplished with the title. Anyone who wants to see a movie called The VelociPastor is going Read More

Before The Kitchen even begins in earnest, a glaring disconnect becomes apparent. Befitting the film’s ‘70s-era setting and indie comic inspiration, the production company logos display as Read More

Nickelodeon stalwart Dora the Explorer is great at teaching preschoolers about words and numbers, but she’s not exactly an exciting big-screen heroine. But Dora’s animated series Read More

There’s no easier way to tug on a movie audience’s heartstrings than to present them with a dying dog. That’s a lesson that author W. Bruce Read More

It’s kind of amazing to think that the Fast & Furious franchise started out with a mid-budget crime drama about street racing. By the time it’s Read More

“Grim” would be too gentle a word to describe what happens in Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale. Set in 1825, the film opens by introducing us to Read More

Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood is unmistakably a Quentin Tarantino film while also something of a conscious step away from the acute genre immersion Read More

The Circle of Life is a beautiful concept introduced in the original 1994 animated film The Lion King. An ideology claims that everything in existence is Read More

The title Stuber is a…well, I suppose we could refer to it as a “witticism.” You see, the lead is named Stu, and he drives an Uber. Read More