Posted in: Review

For Hannah

Most films would be better if their screenplays had gone through just one more draft. For Hannah probably could have used one fewer. The core of the movie is a gripping little wintry noir. A desperate bank robber is trying to get out of town only to have his car break down. He trudges through […]

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What We Do Next

It’s a human impulse to reach out and help. But what happens when that help turns to harm? Are we obligated to then set things right? To do whatever it takes? That’s the question raised in What We Do Next, a talky but intriguing movie from writer/director Stephen Belber. After hearing the anguish of an […]

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Facing Nolan

Drama is conflict. So how do you make an exciting documentary about an unconflicted man? That’s the challenge facing Bradley Jackson, the director of Facing Nolan, a non-fiction film about baseball’s living legend, Nolan Ryan. It’s not just that this is an authorized, and therefore presumably censored, autobiography. It’s that,  what is there to censor? […]

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Morbius

Every once in awhile a movie comes along that seems so ill-conceived, it’s hard to understand how it managed to get made. Morbius is that kind of movie. From the very beginning, it demonstrates its tenuous relationship with logic when Jared Leto’s Dr. Michael Morbius – who has made it his life’s work to cure […]

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Deep Water

It’s been 20 years since Unfaithful, Adrian Lyne’s last outing as a director, but many of the preoccupations featured in that film – as well as some of his other erotic thrillers, such as Indecent Proposal and Fatal Attraction – also drive his latest, Deep Water. With a plot that revolves around marriage, infidelity, and […]

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Turning Red

Turning Red focuses on the changes that happen during puberty, which makes it highly relatable. However, while its central metaphor, which sees the 13-year-old main character Mei (Rosalie Chiang) turn into an enormous red panda every time she gets emotional, makes for an adorable dilemma, it doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny. More successful is […]

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Maysville

Think they just don’t make ‘em like that anymore? Maysville is proof they do. The Appalachian drama is set in the 1920s, but it might just as well have been filmed then, too. The violence is mostly offscreen. The only vaguely erotic moment comes when the leading lady goes for a midnight swim – in […]

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Ghost Light

It is a tale told by several idiots, full of jokes and laughter, signifying nothing … but fun. That’s the basic description of Ghost Light, anyway, a good-humored black comedy featuring a lot of eccentric characters, a few good performers and several premature deaths. Think Knives Out meets the Bard. The idea has a group […]

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After Yang

Writer-director Kogonada creates an immersive future world in his contemplative sci-fi drama After Yang, but he’s more interested in existential musings than in predicting the course of society. There’s little to no explanation for how long “technosapiens” have been part of everyday life, where they came from or what their functions are beyond the insular […]

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Big Gold Brick

Flights of fancy, stylistic flourishes, and zany situations abound in Big Gold Brick. But for a movie that so clearly wants to come across as quirky and darkly humorous, it’s shockingly dull. The story centers on Samuel Liston (Emory Cohen), a down-on-his-luck writer who, while drunkenly stumbling down the middle of a road, is hit […]

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Clairevoyant

People spend their entire lives looking for purpose, searching for meaning, trying to find some kind of answer. Well, Claire has her own existential question. Isn’t there an app for that? The perky twentysomething is the subject of the new mockumentary Clairevoyant, and the comedy comes from her clueless spiritual quest, which she’s trying to […]

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Stay Awake

Filmmakers often turn to stories of addiction because they seem tailor-made for a perfect, three-act structure. Act One: A problem begins. Act Two: The protagonist hits rock bottom. Act Three: The person confronts their problem, conquers it, and begins to struggle back to normalcy. What Stay Awake realizes, though, is that in real life, a […]

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Crabs!

Miss the `70s, when every Roger Corman B-movie had gratuitous nudity and pot-smoking teens? Or the `80s, when Troma Entertainment churned out exploitation flicks crammed with crude humor and over-the-top gore? Well, Crabs! brings them back, and serves them up hot – with an extra layer of cheese. Director Pierce McDermott Berolzheimer’s flick is a […]

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Marry Me

There’s a blissful ignorance on display throughout Marry Me that is simultaneously discomfiting and wistful, its flowery romance presented though a lens of casual globe-hopping, packed concert venues, and glitzy nights on the town. Part of that is surely because it was shot pre-pandemic, another in the long line of films that have been sitting […]

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Lust, Life, Love

If you’re tired of searching for “The One,” maybe you should change your approach and be content with “The Many.” That’s the decision Veronica has come to in Lust, Life, Love. Openly bisexual, guiltlessly polyamorous, she spends her nights at organized orgies, and her days blogging about her various adventures. Mr. Right? Ms. Right? All […]

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Scream (2022)

Ever since Scream 2 opened with the premiere of the movie-within-the-movie Stab, based on the events of the previous installment, the horror franchise has been built around references to itself. The original Scream, released in 1996, is a clever deconstruction of slasher-movie conventions that’s also a masterfully effective slasher movie on its own, thanks to the […]

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