Category: Film

In his directorial debut, Michael B. Jordan brings a surprisingly heartfelt though formulaic addition to the Rocky franchise. Creed III is the seventh installment in the beloved boxing film series but the third to follow Adonis “Donny” Creed (Michael B. Jordan). Those who know the original Rockys or have seen Ryan Coogler’s excellent 2015 spin-off […]

Catalan filmmaker Albert Serra has spent his career untangling and reframing historical and literary figures as avenues to think about history, power, and the human condition. He created a minimalist, slow-cinema take on Don Quixote with 2006’s Honour of the Knights, invoked Casanova and Dracula in 2013’s Story of My Death, and looked to 18th […]

Whether a hijinks film successfully works out its kinks or not, it will always contain a fun mystery game with unscrupulous characters—and that is where Sharper occasionally finds its magic.  Four stories unfold in a monotone, cloudy New York, beginning with Tom (Justice Smith), a cozy sweater-wearing, nervous bookshop owner. He meets Sandra (Briana Middleton), […]

Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan seems to envision the world as something of a high-concept riddle that can only be solved through a process of trial and error that often leaves many dead (or, at the very least, terrorized) in its wake. This film may be the purest incarnation of his sensibility, with three protagonists—a married […]

Julie, a single mother of two played by Laure Calamy, lives in the Parisian suburbs but works tirelessly as the head housemaid for a five-star hotel located in the heart of Paris. Her daily routine begins by waking up the children and gathering herself for a lengthy, claustrophobic commute. Once she drops the children off […]

“Delhi is a gaping wound,” says Mohammad Saud in director Shaunak Sen’s Oscar-nominated documentary All That Breathes. The documentary opens at night, fixed on a horde of rats racing across an otherwise arid wasteland. For longer than expected, Sen leaves the audience with the vermin before introducing the skies, narrowing in on the black kite—a […]

Splitting the difference between the tightly structured drama of the original and the looser, feel-good energy of the sequel, Magic Mike’s Last Dance continues to embody the series’ central thesis that a lap dance has the power to change lives.