|
|
Challengers
(2024)
|
Angelica Jade Bastién
|
The details of these people’s lives and their interiorities are so thinly drawn they feel more like beautiful ideas crashing into one another and leaving little messes that are too easy to clean up.
Posted Apr 22, 2024
|
|
|
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
(2024)
|
Alison Willmore
|
Never sharp enough to approach satire but also too over the top to be taken at face value.
Posted Apr 20, 2024
|
|
|
Rebel Moon: Part Two - The Scargiver
(2024)
|
Alison Willmore
|
There’s nothing original about Rebel Moon. But in a genre with such well established beats, that at least feels more forgivable than the fact that it also has nothing resembling a pulse.
Posted Apr 20, 2024
|
|
|
Abigail
(2024)
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
The amped-up gore elevates the film’s shlock value but not its suspense -- and certainly not its potency.
Posted Apr 20, 2024
|
|
|
Late Night with the Devil
(2023)
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
The cast makes Late Night With the Devil more than watchable, but they also raise our hopes for something better.
Posted Apr 20, 2024
|
|
|
Civil War
(2024)
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
It’s more a call for reflection, an attempt to put us in the shoes of others, than a warning — not an It Can Happen Here movie, but a Here’s What It’s Like movie.
Posted Apr 12, 2024
|
|
|
Sasquatch Sunset
(2024)
|
Alison Willmore
|
The glee everyone involved obviously felt in getting this improbable flick made is never balanced out by a sense of why anyone would need to actually watch it.
Posted Apr 12, 2024
|
|
|
Dog Day Afternoon
(1975)
|
John Simon
|
There are scattered moments of wry humor, sudden pathos, and correct observation throughout.
Posted Apr 07, 2024
|
|
|
Monkey Man
(2024)
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
As an action flick, Monkey Man is often quite entertaining, but it keeps distracting you with images of the film it’s trying, and often failing, to be.
Posted Apr 05, 2024
|
|
|
The First Omen
(2024)
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
If horror is all about loss of control, about feelings of helplessness conjured in the audience to reflect the helplessness of the characters, then this is a true horror film.
Posted Apr 05, 2024
|
|
|
The Old Oak
(2023)
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
With The Old Oak, Ken Loach goes out with one last, full-throated call for brotherhood and solidarity. It’s the most hopeful the old soldier’s been in years.
Posted Apr 05, 2024
|
|
|
The Beast
(2023)
|
Alison Willmore
|
It overflows with intriguing ideas, even if they aren’t all fully explored.
Posted Apr 04, 2024
|
|
|
Spaceballs
(1987)
|
David Denby
|
Most of the picture is second-drawer stuff.
Posted Apr 03, 2024
|
|
|
Seven
(1995)
|
David Denby
|
Seven is gripping and intricate in a sordid way, and Freeman and Pitt, physical and spiritual opposites, become an oddly satisfying pair, but I was happy when the movie had played its last trick on me and could hold me no longer.
Posted Mar 29, 2024
|
|
|
Wicked Little Letters
(2023)
|
Nicholas Quah
|
Hiding somewhere in this seaside caper is a genuinely interesting psychosexual drama, buried beneath suffocating layers of treacly comedy.
Posted Mar 29, 2024
|
|
|
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
(2024)
|
Alison Willmore
|
The kaiju of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire don’t stand for anything but themselves. They’re just giant monsters that occasionally fight one another, which would be forgivable if the fighting in the movie weren’t so torpid.
Posted Mar 28, 2024
|
|
|
Shirley
(2024)
|
Nicholas Quah
|
It views her with an all-too-neat moralism about electoral politics, and this ultimately produces a movie that fails to match the actual power of its subject or Regina King, the star who plays her.
Posted Mar 23, 2024
|
|
|
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
(2023)
|
Alison Willmore
|
What stands out is its willingness to acknowledge the general horror of modern existence, and then to suggest the only reasonable response is to laugh.
Posted Mar 22, 2024
|
|
|
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
(2024)
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
Frozen Empire isn’t nearly as glacial or tepid as Afterlife, but it does suffer from a similar desire to drown us in Easter eggs.
Posted Mar 22, 2024
|
|
|
Road House
(2024)
|
Alison Willmore
|
Nü-Road House believes that its audience is there for pandemonium rather than philosophy, and you know what? It’s not wrong.
Posted Mar 21, 2024
|
|
|
Frida
(2024)
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
Gutierrez gives us a Frida we can believe in.
Posted Mar 19, 2024
|
|
|
Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus
(2023)
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
As Sakamoto communes with his music, we feel like we might be intruding on a private requiem. At times, he seems to be playing for himself. Are those reflections in his glasses tricks of the light, or are they tears?
Posted Mar 16, 2024
|
|
|
The Fall Guy
(2024)
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
Maybe the most surprising thing about The Fall Guy is how genuinely romantic it is.
Posted Mar 13, 2024
|
|
|
Damsel
(2024)
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
More than a fantasy adventure, Damsel is a grisly and at times even touching tale of endurance and survival. It’s sweaty, snarly fun.
Posted Mar 08, 2024
|
|
|
Problemista
(2023)
|
Alison Willmore
|
The film, like its protagonist, feels stuck in a nascent state, leaning into Elizabeth’s shrill voice because it’s not yet certain of its own.
Posted Mar 05, 2024
|
|
|
The Shawshank Redemption
(1994)
|
David Denby
|
There's nothing going on in The Shawshank Redemption from shot to shot -- no expressive life, no spontaneity or feeling. It's a stunted movie.
Posted Mar 04, 2024
|
|
|
Spaceman
(2024)
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
By the time Spaceman fully embraces its metaphoric qualities in the third act, the increasingly ornate and abstract imagery feels unearned. What’s worse, the movie star at the center of it all seems more lost than ever.
Posted Mar 04, 2024
|
|
|
Forrest Gump
(1994)
|
David Denby
|
Zemeckis has made a fast movie about a slow hero; he transforms Forrest's daffy misconceptions into lyrical flights. Forrest Gump has a softer, more delicate touch and a richer current of feeling than any of the other holy-innocent movies.
Posted Mar 01, 2024
|
|
|
Dune: Part Two
(2024)
|
Alison Willmore
|
It belongs firmly to Zendaya, who gives the second half of Denis Villeneuve’s Frank Herbert adaptation an emotional tangibility that the first, in all its exotic majesty, eschewed.
Posted Feb 29, 2024
|
|
|
Four Weddings and a Funeral
(1994)
|
David Denby
|
The movie has a genuine good spirit, a democratic appreciation of erotic possibilities in unlikely situations. And Newell and Curtis convince us that the people in this odd group actually do like each other.
Posted Feb 29, 2024
|
|
|
Four Weddings and a Funeral
(1994)
|
John Powers
|
Although it promises to be a frothy tour de force, this Mike Newell movie can't live up to its formal conceit. It cheats on its premise and falls back on the most sodden sodden clichés of English comedy.
Posted Feb 29, 2024
|
|
|
Drive-Away Dolls
(2024)
|
Alison Willmore
|
It’s just fizzy enough to sustain itself for a jaunt down the Eastern seaboard, or, barring that, an 84-minute runtime.
Posted Feb 24, 2024
|
|
|
Madame Web
(2024)
|
Alison Willmore
|
Even Johnson has her limits, and Madame Web... blows so far past them that you can practically guess which scenes were shot last based on the degree to which its star has given up.
Posted Feb 16, 2024
|
|
|
Bob Marley: One Love
(2024)
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
The filmmakers can’t commit to their own conceit. They keep trying to contextualize, to present little glimpses of the past, and are instead left with a hollow biopic.
Posted Feb 14, 2024
|
|
|
Quiz Show
(1994)
|
David Denby
|
Quiz Show is remarkably entertaining, a movie that works as spectacle, as tangled ethical drama, as an exposé of the fault lines of ethnicity and class in this country.
Posted Feb 13, 2024
|
|
|
Under the Fig Trees
(2021)
|
Roxana Hadadi
|
Under the Fig Trees is a big-minded film that grounds its ideas about labor, sexism, faith, and modernity in the zippy rhythms of its characters’ negotiations around friendship, romance, and work.
Posted Feb 07, 2024
|
|
|
How to Have Sex
(2023)
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
[It] could easily have become a simplistic cautionary tale, a racier version of an after-school special. Instead, Walker’s delicate eye and feel for rhythm lend the movie an ominous cadence.
Posted Feb 02, 2024
|
|
|
Argylle
(2024)
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
Because Vaughn never drops his fantastical, cartoonish style, “reality” ceases to have any true meaning within the context of the film; he keeps trying to up the stakes even as what we’re watching becomes less and less consequential.
Posted Feb 02, 2024
|
|
|
The Greatest Night in Pop
(2024)
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
One can’t help but enjoy the spectacle of all these stars, who were like gods at the time, standing around getting to know each other like awkward kids at a school social.
Posted Jan 30, 2024
|
|
|
War Game
(2024)
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
Moss and Gerber clearly understand that the ticktock of this hypothetical insurgency will make for exciting cinema, but they’re also interested in how the people participating in this simulation got here.
Posted Jan 26, 2024
|
|
|
A Real Pain
(2024)
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
A touching character study anchored by a lively Kieran Culkin performance, Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain moves gently and smoothly but hints at an all-consuming darkness underneath.
Posted Jan 26, 2024
|
|
|
Will & Harper
(2024)
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
The film’s most powerful achievement is perhaps also its most basic: the simple sight of two friends talking, openly and gently, about all the things on their minds.
Posted Jan 24, 2024
|
|
|
Thelma
(2024)
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
Manages to be so charming and heartfelt that the laughs never feel lazy, cheap, or cruel. Its observations about the disconnect between its elderly protagonist and the society around her are surprisingly relatable.
Posted Jan 22, 2024
|
|
|
Love Lies Bleeding
(2024)
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
Stewart, who in her best work turns anxiety into poetry, has arguably never been more vulnerable, and O’Brian displays a boldness that comes not just from her extraordinary physique but also from an inner innocence she brings to the character.
Posted Jan 21, 2024
|
|
|
The Outrun
(2024)
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
The Outrun is ultimately about how our search for certainty and control all too often results in the loss of what little we do have.
Posted Jan 21, 2024
|
|
|
Presence
(2024)
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
It’s an art film that also works as a spellbinding horror film, and it might be the best thing Soderbergh has done in ages.
Posted Jan 21, 2024
|
|
|
Love Me
(2024)
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
Love Me, despite having two incredibly expressive actors at its center, remains furiously literal-minded in its questioning. And unfortunately, the more questions this picture asks, the more maudlin and shallow it becomes.
Posted Jan 21, 2024
|
|
|
I Saw the TV Glow
(2024)
|
Alison Willmore
|
I Saw the TV Glow manages to be enveloping without being inviting and to offer a sense of emotional intimacy without requiring that those emotions be comprehensible.
Posted Jan 21, 2024
|
|
|
Ibelin
(2024)
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
Each movement of the film opens up a new world, and each is affecting in its own way.
Posted Jan 20, 2024
|
|
|
Between the Temples
(2024)
|
Bilge Ebiri
|
We get the sense that Silver would be perfectly happy just sitting there and watching these people forever, story and conflict and resolution be damned. And it really is in these characters’ close exchanges that the movie comes to life.
Posted Jan 20, 2024
|
>