As Dara returns home, her breathing is halted and heavy, signs of an inevitable tension after spending two years away. She explores the space as if she’s entering it for the first time, an alien in her own home. In the bathroom, she stares at herself in the mirror, and even her own reflection seems […]
100 Days to Live
As the mind-bending thriller 100 Days to Live begins, a woman practices yoga in a Chicago park. She greets a young neighbor who goes to play on the nearby jungle gym. When the boy looks her way again, the woman is gone and in her place is a photo album with the words “Tanya Was […]
Godzilla vs. Kong
When last we left King Kong in Kong: Skull Island…well, I don’t really remember. Skull Island was some sort of Truman Show-style imprisonment dome, and there was a plot to kill Kong, who was misunderstood, but he survived. Now, when last we left Godzilla in Godzilla: King of the Monsters…uh, there was a plot to […]
French Exit
In this ridiculously long – some might say “endless” – Oscar season, French Exit was originally positioned as a sure-fire Best Actress vehicle for Michelle Pfeiffer, a standout role that could potentially deliver an Oscar win to the three-time past nominee. As the COVID-impacted release calendar started to fill, however, the film – and thus, […]
Tina (2021)
You may think you know Tina Turner’s story. It’s been the source of a best-selling autobiography, an Oscar-winning movie, and two stage musicals. As she made plans to retire from the public eye, she sat down with filmmakers Dan Lindsay and TJ Martin — who directed the acclaimed 2011 documentary Undefeated — to tell her […]
Shiva Baby
Being spoiled can be stifling, as Danielle (Rachel Sennott) demonstrates in writer-director Emma Seligman’s assured debut feature Shiva Baby. College senior Danielle is spoiled by her sugar daddy Max (Danny Deferrari), who bestows her with cash and jewelry after their morning bedroom romp. He thinks he’s helping her pay for law school, but she’s really […]
Dolphin Island
Dolphin Island is the kind of movie I would have adored as a marine mammal-loving tween. The story centers on 14-year-old Annabel (Tyler Jade Nixon), who lives in the Bahamas on a fishing boat with her paternal grandfather, Jonah Coleridge (Peter Woodward), surrounded by a close-knit group of friends who care deeply for her. Anna’s […]
Nobody
The ongoing John Wick-ification of cinema continues with Nobody, which extrapolates the base premise of the Wick franchise to its truest realization: a really, really normal guy who kicks the ass of everyone in his path. 2014’s original John Wick was about a seemingly regular guy being forcefully pulled back down into a seedy underworld […]
The Yellow Wallpaper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper is a seminal text in feminist literature. Published in 1892, it has been a hallmark of feminist literary theory and discourse in the century-plus since its creation. The first-person account of a woman going mad as a result of the confinement of patriarchal oppression remains one the most profound […]
Happily
Happily takes for its subject adult relationships in all their forms, yet much like many an adult relationship, the movie abruptly shifts from comedy to drama, and from fantasy to whodunit to horror, to often destabilizing, sometimes engrossing, but always interesting effect. The film centers on Tom (Joel McHale) and Janet (Kerry Bishé), a couple […]
Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape
Lou Ottens, the Danish engineer who invented the audio tape, died last week. This simple-yet-ubiquitous technology went from being a staple of every home, to near obsolescence, to a revival as a hip and affordable format to music distribution, all within less than half a century. In Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape, director Zack Taylor unwinds […]
Paint
Writers need to be read. Musicians need to be heard. But after three years of painting, Dan, Kelsey and Quinn haven’t hung a picture on anybody’s walls but their own. Are you still a painter if nobody sees your paintings? Is selling out worse than not selling at all? Paint asks those questions, and lets […]
The Mimic
From the moment it starts, The Mimic, which is based on a true story, establishes a fanciful tone built on rapid-fire dialogue and deadpan wit. Yet while the movie has the odd poignant moment, it works best as a thought exercise. The film centers on The Narrator (Thomas Sadoski), who not only narrates the film […]
Somewhere with No Bridges
Martha’s Vineyard is the largest island on the East Coast that isn’t connected to any bridges. That intriguing factoid, conveyed at the beginning of Somewhere with No Bridges, explains the title right up front, but also opens a window into the film’s exploration of a cloistered community. A documentary that pieces together fragments of various […]
Moxie
Since time immemorial, girls have spent their high school years dealing with harassment from their male classmates; girls’ school sports are frequently underfunded compared to their male colleagues; girls’ dress codes are more strenuously enforced than boys’; and required reading assignments are weighted towards white male writers at the expense of more diverse writers. In […]
Coming 2 America
Most enduring about 1988’s Coming to America is how endearing it is despite its perceived flaws. It’s a very simple fish-out-of-water tale, though one that succeeds on the earnest goodwill of its performers. It’s a little overlong as it parcels screen time to an expansive ensemble cast, but cutting it down would deny us some […]
The World’s A Little Blurry
In the pre-pandemic era, Billie Eilish rose from out of nowhere to become a global phenomenon with her 2019 album WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? Her apocalyptic lyrics, horror-movie aesthetic, and irreverent attitude resonated with zoomers coming of age in an uncertain time, while her reedy, jazzy voice, showtune-catchy melodies, and […]
Tom & Jerry
If Tom & Jerry feels retro, that isn’t because it harkens back to the gleeful anarchy of the duo’s original animated shorts, since it rarely does. Instead, this slapdash cinematic lark feels like a holdover from another era, lost in a time capsule of style and perspective. It might most resemble the late-‘90s/early-‘00s string of […]
West Michigan
There are certain things that will always be ripe for artistic exploration, and adolescent angst is one of them. West Michigan is one of the latest movies to explore the challenges of teendom, this time through the eyes of 17-year-old Hannah (Chloe Ray Warmoth), who’s both wise beyond her years and utterly lost. While the […]
The Father
In the latter years of my grandfather’s life, he began to exhibit some mild signs of dementia but, mercifully, it never deteriorated beyond that. He wandered into confusion, but never drifted so deep that he couldn’t be reeled back. Florian Zeller’s The Father is all about that tragic drift, inexorable and all-consuming, memories and perceptions […]