Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa beautifully and methodically renders the story of a married couple plunged into uncertainty in the days leading up to World War II. With a slow-burn plot, the film marries historical drama with psychological tension, highlighted by intensely focused performances from Yû Aoi, who plays a wife slowly suspecting her husband of being […]
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The Nowhere Inn
In The Nowhere Inn, musician Annie Clark (St. Vincent) collaborates with best friend Carrie Brownstein to create a documentary about her life and music. Finding the largely private and mundane life of Clark uninspiring, the collaboration takes a turn for the bizarre when Annie takes Carrie’s suggestions of livening up the documentary a bit too […]
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Everybody’s Talking About Jamie
From a true story, to a 2011 television documentary, to a hit West End musical, and now a feature film—it seems that everybody really is talking about Jamie. And for good reason: there’s an inescapable charm to 16-year-old Jamie New (Max Harwood), who leaves his life in Sheffield to chase his dreams of becoming a […]
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Anne at 13,000 Ft.
Everything’s up in the air for Anne (Deragh Campbell)—both literally, after she becomes preoccupied with skydiving following an excursion for her best friend’s bachelorette party, and figuratively, as she contends with the uncertainty of life in her late 20s. A childcare worker in Toronto who’s just moved into her own place, the 27-year-old has more […]
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The Card Counter
If guilt could be considered a prison of the mind, then it’s no wonder that the strangely penitential William Tell (Oscar Isaac) acclimated nicely to prison. Having served time for his role in torturing inmates at Abu Ghraib, he reenters society as a nomadic gambler, traveling from city to city and casino to casino, pursuing […]
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The Year of the Everlasting Storm
Taken from onscreen text in the segment made by Thai experimental filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives), the title of this high-concept anthology film poetically embodies its overarching premise: each work was made during and responds to the year-plus-long COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to Weerasethakul’s contribution, it includes short films […]
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It Takes Three
It Takes Three is the latest teen-take on Cyrano de Bergerac. When the coolest guy in school realizes the object of his affection sees through his bullshit, he enlists the class nerd to make his social media accounts more about substance than style. While not as strong as Netflix’s The Half of It, the film […]
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Reminiscence
“Some things that happened for the first time,” Mae (Rebecca Ferguson) sings, “seem to be happening again.” She is lying in a bath with electrodes attached to her head, mentally replaying her live set from earlier in the day, while the technician guiding the machine she’s hooked up to, Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman), loses objectivity […]
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We Need to Do Something
We Need To Do Something is a single-location horror movie that skillfully packs a cramped space full of suspense and scares. After a family of four seeks shelter from a storm in their home’s bathroom, they become trapped. The setup at first plays on the relatable fear of being surrounded by familial tension. In this […]
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Nia DaCosta’s Candyman hooks into something new
The new Candyman film draws inspiration from the original from the very first scene of the opening credits. Just as the 1992 version began with a slow crawl along the highway, the 2021 version follows the path of the el tracks, then flips, traveling skyward and westward through downtown in a stunning, upside-down shot of […]
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No Man of God
While No Man of God isn’t the one Ted Bundy movie to watch, it is one worth watching. Ostensibly about FBI analyst Bill Hagmaier, the film spans from his initial meeting with an incarcerated Bundy during the inception of the agency’s criminal profiling unit to Bundy’s last days alive. Bundy, of course, still steals the […]
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CODA
CODA is a coming-of-age story meant to move. And while the beats of the film may be predictable, it’s no less affecting. Following Ruby Rossi (Emilia Jones), a child of deaf adults (CODA) and the only hearing person in her family, viewers are introduced to a teenager that’s torn. Will she help her parents (played […]
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Ema
Throughout a lethal performance from Mariana Di Girolamo as the flamethrower-wielding title character in Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s eighth film—his first since Jackie (2016)—we see an individual who is the human equal to napalm, an incinerating force whose power derives from twinned, potent fuels coming together and exploding.
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The Night House
The Night House is a compelling meditation on the horror of one’s own mind. In the aftermath of her husband Owen’s (Evan Jonigkeit) death, Beth (Rebecca Hall) finds herself alone in the lakeside home he built for them. The suicide she never suspected leaves her looking for answers about the man she thought she knew […]
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Wildland
Has Danish director Jeanette Nordahl, in her debut feature, invented the tender mob movie? Or is life on the compound with Danes who rob, debt-collect, and home invade just inevitably going to fall more on the subdued end of the gangsterdom barometer than your average Sopranos episode? The calm atmosphere of the film, in its […]