It’s hard to follow up such a success, but Across the Spider-Verse (the second of a planned trilogy) takes the action and the story to the next level and may just be a superior film.
Category: Film
Review: Shooting Stars
This adaptation of Lebron James’s and Buzz Bissinger’s 2009 book would have done better as a six-to-eight-hour limited series. There’s a compelling story here, but this version isn’t it.
Review: Reality
By presenting testimony without editorializing, the film becomes a searing indictment of a country that routinely punishes low-level true believers while rewarding traitors and opportunists up the food chain for their treachery.
Review: The Quiet Epidemic
The Quiet Epidemic is no cinematic masterpiece—ultimately it’s more about advocacy, with calls to action on how to support the community, than it is about any kind of aesthetic rigor. But it’s hard to deny that CLD and the controversy surrounding it evoke many existential questions about the reality of suffering that are best served by this particular medium.
Review: Past Lives
Celine Song’s debut film is, without a doubt, one of the best films of the year.
Review: The Boogeyman
It fits neatly into this lineage of trauma monster movies like Smile, Men, and Hatching that want to be sure—really sure—you understand what the big scary monster represents. Thankfully, despite the lack of subtlety inherent to that approach, it’s probably the best of the bunch so far.
Doug Adams wrote the book on the Lord of the Rings scores
At Howard Shore’s invitation, Doug Adams—a Chicago-based author and musicologist—observed, documented, analyzed, and eventually illuminated the composer’s work in a 400-page book titled The Music of the Lord of the Rings Films.
Review: About My Father
What’s more American for the 1 percent than smiling in the face of blood money while hiding behind a family name and claiming to have the same interests as the very people they most despise?
Review: All Man: The International Male Story
All Man: The International Male Story offers a touching retrospect of this nearly forgotten landmark of men’s fashion.
Review: Fast X
Fast X continues the franchise’s mission to scale bigger and campier heights with each movie, and there are moments that will have you full-volume hooting and hollering in your seat, but it’s undone by the gravest sin of this cinematic universe: it breaks up the family.
Review: Kandahar
If I’m going to watch this man retcon the war on terror to look heroic, it should at the very least be over-the-top enough to be entertaining.
Review: The Little Mermaid
Overall, it’s a visually gorgeous film, buoyed by a strong ingenue in Bailey with enough laughs for the kids and the nostalgic adults—just don’t expect anything new.
Review: You Hurt My Feelings
Definitely one to watch the way most people do with SNL: wait till the highlights hit YouTube and skip the rest.
Review: Love to Love You, Donna Summer
This is a daughter’s exploration of who her mother was at her core, and why she lived her life and made her choices the way she did.
Review: Master Gardener
Schrader’s latest film wanders off into the familiar territory of his unmodulated thought.