Billie Piper, the writer, director, and star of the black comedy Rare Beasts, is best known to American audiences for playing Rose Tyler, companion to the ninth and tenth Doctors on the revival of Doctor Who. More recently, she co-created and starred in HBO Max’s I Hate Suzie, an engrossing, frequently thought-provoking eight-episode exploration of […]
Author: Cynthia Vinney
Risen
A meteorite strikes a small town in Pennsylvania, making the air toxic and killing everyone in the vicinity. A short while later, the dead who were closest to the meteorite when it landed start coming back to life. To figure out what’s going on, the man leading the investigation, Colonel Emmerich (Jack Campbell), calls in […]
Free Guy
We’re all the main characters of our own stories, but in other people’s stories the best we can hope for is a supporting role. In Free Guy, endearing lonely-heart bank teller Guy (Ryan Reynolds) learns he’s nothing more than a background character in the story he’s unwittingly a part of. When he decides to change […]
Beckett
After debuting on opening night at this year’s Locarno Film Festival, Beckett arrives on Netflix as another in a long line of films about ordinary men caught up in extraordinary circumstances. The movie takes obvious cues from ’70s thrillers like Three Days of the Condor and Hitchcock masterpieces like North by Northwest, yet director Ferdinando […]
Jungle Cruise
Jungle Cruise is the latest film based on a Disney theme park attraction, and fans will be delighted by the handful of obvious nods (puns, so many puns!) and Easter eggs (Dr. Albert Falls! Trader Sam!) referencing the iconic ride. If only the movie’s plot weren’t so convoluted and derivative. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra from […]
The Exchange
The Exchange centers on Tim Long (Ed Oxenbould) a teenager in small-town Canada in 1986 who chafes against his fellow residents’ lack of sophistication. This has resulted in an isolated, friendless existence where Tim would rather hang out with the curmudgeonly janitor at City Hall than kids his own age at the local hockey rink. […]
Gunpowder Milkshake
Netflix’s Gunpowder Milkshake takes place in a neon-soaked alternate universe where only criminals and the people who aid and abet them seem to exist. At home there is Karen Gillan’s Sam, a hitwoman for a crime syndicate called The Firm. Sam was raised by Nathan (Paul Giamatti), one of the organization’s higher ups, after her […]
Black Widow
Black Widow is the first Marvel Cinematic Universe movie to hit theaters in over a year (it’s also available via Disney+ Premier Access). Yet, while its opening was delayed due to the pandemic, even if it had come out on its original release date in May 2020, it still would have felt like it came […]
The Ice Road
Since 2008’s Taken, Liam Neeson has more than established his action hero bona fides after previously demonstrating his talent as a dramatic actor in films like Schindler’s List. Unfortunately, Netflix’s The Ice Road won’t burnish his legacy in either category, as even Neeson can’t make this poorly executed action thriller exciting. Neeson plays a gruff […]
F9: The Fast Saga
Fans of the Fast and Furious franchise pretty much know what to expect from new entries by now: thrilling action, comfortingly familiar characters spouting platitudes about family, and the odd joke or two. From that perspective, F9, the ninth movie in the improbable saga, is a smashing success — and I mean that literally. It’s […]
Every Single Someone
It’s often been said that movies reflect society, yet despite America’s terrible epidemic of gun violence, movies have rarely grappled with the issue, much less explored the topic of violence from the perspective of the often young, white men who choose to perpetrate it. Filmmakers’ reasons for staying away from this messy topic are understandable. […]
Untitled Horror Movie
The extremely meta – and very funny – Untitled Horror Movie stars six TV actors from shows such as Shadow Hunters, The Vampire Diaries, 13 Reasons Why, Never Have I Ever and The Umbrella Academy playing… six TV actors. In the film, they star in a popular TV show that’s on the verge of cancellation. […]
Awake
Awake, Netflix’s latest apocalyptic thriller, echoes films like A Quiet Place and Bird Box, in which a single event changes the fate of humanity, forcing its characters into a desperate fight for survival. However, Awake‘s characters and the world it builds aren’t nearly as compelling as those of other similarly themed films, resulting in a […]
Riders of Justice
The plot description of the Danish film Riders of Justice makes it sound like a traditional revenge thriller in the vein of John Wick or Kill Bill. Mads Mikkelsen’s career military man Markus returns home to care for his teenage daughter Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadenberg) after his wife Emma (Anne Birgitte Lind) is killed in […]
The Get Together
At this point, the coming-of-age movie that unfolds over the course of a single day is a tried-and-true formula. The Get Together is the most recent entry in the genre, and it’s the rare example of a film that both evokes classics like Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused and George Lucas’ American Graffiti, while very […]
The Water Man
The Water Man is the kind of movie that could go in several directions. With elements of the hero’s journey, a coming-of-age story and a fairy tale, actor David Oyelowo’s feature directorial debut, is ultimately a throwback to ’80s family films like The Goonies, E.T. and Labyrinth. The movie centers on young Gunner Boone (This […]
Monday
Monday takes place during the so-called honeymoon phase of a romance between two Americans living in Greece. Mickey, a DJ, and Chloe, an immigration lawyer, meet at a party and sleep together on a nearby beach before learning each other’s names. After realizing she left her purse with her money, keys and other essentials at […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]