Four icons of 1960s Black culture didn’t actually gather in a Miami hotel room on the night of February 25, 1964, to discuss important personal and societal issues, but playwright Kemp Powers’ imagined version of that meeting feels genuine. Regina King effectively adapts Powers’ One Night in Miami into a feature film (with a screenplay by […]
Author: Josh Bell
Pieces of a Woman
After a few short opening scenes, Pieces of a Woman plunges the viewer into a harrowing 23-minute single-take sequence of childbirth gone wrong, as Martha (Vanessa Kirby) and her partner Sean (Shia LaBeouf) slowly realize that their home birth with midwife Eva (Molly Parker) is not going to end with the joyous event they anticipated. […]
Soul
After exploring the complex world of anthropomorphic emotions in 2015’s Inside Out, Pixar’s Pete Docter takes on the complex world of the afterlife in Soul, which deals with similarly melancholy themes. As in Inside Out, director and co-writer Docter takes on some weighty existential ideas for what is ostensibly a family-focused animated movie, and Soul […]
News of the World
Tom Hanks may be getting a little weary of his designated role as America’s surrogate dad, but it fits him perfectly in the appealingly old-fashioned Western News of the World, which reunites Hanks with Captain Phillips director Paul Greengrass. Greengrass is known for the gritty immediacy of both his fact-based dramas like Captain Phillips, United […]
The Racer
Set during the doping scandal of the 1998 Tour de France, The Racer is a fictional story reflective of cycling culture at the time, in which the use of performance-enhancing drugs was a widespread open secret. But director and co-writer Kieron J. Walsh isn’t interested in social commentary, and there’s very little judgment here of […]
Run
After putting a fresh spin on the missing-teen thriller with his 2018 debut Searching, which took place entirely on computer and cell phone screens, director Aneesh Chaganty opts for a more traditional format for his second feature, Run. Although it’s presented conventionally, Run still takes a smart approach to a familiar thriller plot, delivering another […]
Rom Boys: 40 Years of Rad
When you think of skateboarding culture, a working-class London suburb is probably not the first place that comes to mind, but that’s exactly where the mecca of European skateboarding emerged in the late 1970s. Matt Harris’ documentary Rom Boys: 40 Years of Rad explores the unlikely rise and even unlikelier legacy of the Rom Skatepark, a […]
Wolfwalkers
Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon started making movies on a small scale with 2009’s The Secret of Kells, a gorgeously illustrated fable inspired by Irish folklore, and the company has grown in size and reputation over the course of its first three features, all of which were nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar. Wolfwalkers […]
The Dark and the Wicked
When The Strangers was released in 2008, it looked like the beginning of a major horror career for writer-director Bryan Bertino, who created one of the most intense, unsettling movies of the past 20 years. But Bertino struggled to follow up his initial success and to recapture the acclaim of his debut. It was six […]
Chasing Einstein
Even nearly 70 years after his death, Albert Einstein is still likely to be one of the top answers (along with, presumably, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye the Science Guy) if the average person is asked to name a famous scientist. But there have been decades of further advancement on Einstein’s theories by dozens […]
Clouds
Actor turned director Justin Baldoni must really have a thing for the love lives of terminally ill teens, which have been the subject of both of his feature films thus far. After making his directorial debut with the 2019 weepie Five Feet Apart, about a romance between two teens with cystic fibrosis, Baldoni returns with […]
Spark: A Burning Man Story
Even back in 2012, the annual Burning Man gathering (organizers prefer not to call it a “festival”) was experiencing serious growing pains, and the event has only gotten bigger and more unwieldy since then. It’s also gotten much more famous and influential, and the 2013 documentary Spark: A Burning Man Story provides an interesting snapshot of […]
The War With Grandpa
The sight of Robert De Niro debasing himself in a moronic slapstick comedy barely even evokes a response anymore, so his presence in The War With Grandpa isn’t offensive, just depressing. Based on a 1984 novel by Robert Kimmel Smith, The War With Grandpa features De Niro in grumpy old man mode as Ed, an […]
Yellow Rose
Rose Garcia (Eva Noblezada) is a teenager growing up in Austin, Texas, with a love for country music and a dream of writing and performing her own country songs. She’s also an illegal immigrant from the Philippines, brought over to the U.S. by her mother Priscilla (Princess Punzalan) when she was a small child, living […]
Give or Take
An aimless man in his 30s leaves the big city where he works at a corporate job and heads back to his small hometown for the funeral of a close family member. There, he reconnects with old friends, reassesses his priorities and learns to appreciate a quieter, slower way of life. It’s the plot of […]
On the Rocks
Sofia Coppola may have downgraded her ambitions with her seventh feature, On the Rocks, but that doesn’t mean she’s come close to selling out. A gentle comedy about the rocky relationship between a father and daughter, On the Rocks feels like a personal story, and there’s a temptation to search for a reflection of Coppola’s relationship […]
Possessor
David Cronenberg hasn’t made a movie since 2014’s Maps to the Stars, but his son Brandon has taken up his legacy of calculated, disturbing body horror in the intervening years. Brandon Cronenberg’s new film Possessor feels very much like the kind of movie his dad would have made, while also forging its own distinct path. […]
Antebellum
For its first 40 minutes or so, Antebellum is virtually indistinguishable from a standard historical drama about the Civil War-era South. On a cotton plantation somewhere in the South, there are cruel masters who berate and abuse the slaves, while the slaves conspire in hushed whispers with each other to plan an escape that may […]
The Broken Hearts Gallery
The current resurgence in romantic comedies has come mainly via streaming services, especially Netflix, which has developed a familiar house style with pleasant, engaging movies like Set It Up and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. So it’s a little odd to see small-scale romantic comedy The Broken Hearts Gallery get a full theatrical […]
Bill & Ted Face the Music
It’s been nearly 30 years since we saw heavy metal doofuses Bill and Ted onscreen, and while 1989’s Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure has grown into a genuine classic (and 1991’s Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey has a substantial following, too), that’s no guarantee that a return for these characters in middle age would make […]