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Saint Frances
(2019)
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Molly Templeton
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O'Sullivan's script knows when to press and when to pull back, and the entire cast is beautifully comfortable in director Thompson's hands.
Posted May 20, 2020
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Phoenix, Oregon
(2019)
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Molly Templeton
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Lived-in, warm and life-sized...
Posted Apr 06, 2020
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Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band
(2019)
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Rick Levin
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Mostly, the documentary conveys the way The Band, a product of the '60s, stood both inside and outside the culture of the time.
Posted Mar 05, 2020
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Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
(2020)
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Molly Templeton
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I'm ready for the sequel.
Posted Mar 03, 2020
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The Lodge
(2019)
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Rick Levin
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The Lodge takes everyday family dysfunction and cranks the knob to 11, and the result is a postmodern fairy tale that brilliantly churns our contemporary fears and phobias into something resembling a 21st-century Hansel and Gretel.
Posted Feb 28, 2020
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Color Out of Space
(2019)
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Rick Levin
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Stanley, with tasteful precision, walks the finest tightrope between Lovecraftian grandiosity and grindhouse grit, resulting in a movie that is both really scary when it's scary and really funny when it's funny, and supremely in control of both poles.
Posted Jan 30, 2020
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1917
(2019)
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Rick Levin
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Cue awards season. This one's a shoo-in for the Oscars, which can't resist imitation, regurgitation and the great-man theory of bunk history.
Posted Jan 16, 2020
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Uncut Gems
(2019)
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Rick Levin
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Uncut Gems spools out like an Old Testament parable updated for our late-capitalist collapse, a timely tale of greed, envy and idolatry which - like that chunk of mined rock - hides an eternally glimmering truth inside its jagged exterior.
Posted Jan 09, 2020
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Honey Boy
(2019)
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Rick Levin
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I can't imagine what sort of emotional reckoning, not to mention courage and risk, was involved for LeBeouf to bare his soul - and his family's past - with such raw vulnerability, but the results are invigorating.
Posted Dec 19, 2019
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Knives Out
(2019)
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Molly Templeton
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Knives Out effectively re-establishes Johnson post-The Last Jedi as a filmmaker with a lot more on his mind than just franchise pictures.
Posted Dec 19, 2019
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The Irishman
(2019)
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Rick Levin
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For all its tragedy, the story of The Irishman is told with love - a grudging but expansive love, one that neither condemns nor praises but rather looks deep inside each character to find a strangled humanity.
Posted Dec 06, 2019
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Jojo Rabbit
(2019)
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Rick Levin
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Beneath the madcap action, the goony characters and Wes Anderson scenery beats a big heart coursing with the stuff of life, against all odds and, often, in the throes of unspeakable crimes.
Posted Nov 07, 2019
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The Lighthouse
(2019)
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Rick Levin
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Eggers balances the film's darkly religious and malevolently Freudian themes by portraying the visceral realities of two men scrunched together in ramshackle surroundings on an island of rain and rock.
Posted Oct 28, 2019
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Monos
(2019)
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Rick Levin
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Monos has the feeling of being dropped with no map into the middle of a world in collapse, and the confusion on screen telegraphs a kind of psychic and social fracture.
Posted Oct 17, 2019
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The Peanut Butter Falcon
(2019)
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Rick Levin
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If our humanity is going to be restored, fostered and buttressed, it's art like this that will accomplish the deed, by reminding us all what it means to believe in one another.
Posted Sep 12, 2019
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Ready or Not
(2019)
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Rick Levin
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Despite the cartoonish exterior, Ready or Not is a nasty movie, a millennial revenge fable that takes full cathartic aim at the monstrousness of our social upheaval.
Posted Aug 29, 2019
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Maiden
(2018)
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Rick Levin
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Exaltation, not outrage, is the primary experience of this film.
Posted Aug 22, 2019
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Melvin
(2009)
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Rick Levin
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Channeling the spirit of Troma's low-budget horror grinders, director Henry Weintraub creates a decisively anti-John Hughes teen fantasy, full of high-concept raunch and low-blow delight.
Posted Aug 22, 2019
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Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood
(2019)
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Rick Levin
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Tarantino has upped his game with this one, and in the process revealed the mature sensibility of a filmmaker capable of looking backward without simply cannibalizing his own achievements and becoming a self-parody.
Posted Aug 01, 2019
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Midsommar
(2019)
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Rick Levin
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As in Shirley Jackson's story "The Lottery," Aster hints that the price of paradise is not dreaming; it is blood.
Posted Jul 03, 2019
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Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché
(2018)
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Rick Levin
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Directed by Pamela B. Green, this documentary is at once a love letter to and a furious argument for the lasting legacy and inarguable genius of Guy-Blaché.
Posted Jun 27, 2019
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Late Night
(2019)
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Molly Templeton
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The movie isn't without its clichés... but Kaling and director Nisha Ganatra build in nuance wherever possible.
Posted Jun 21, 2019
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Booksmart
(2019)
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Rick Levin
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Wilde humanizes this much maligned but rarely understood generation, giving it a voice that is properly rapturous, chaotic and, yes, dignified.
Posted May 30, 2019
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Tolkien
(2019)
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Molly Templeton
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Tolkien has no idea how that magic happens - no idea how to show it, no idea how to infuse a film about a master of imagination with anything but the most literal of fantastic imagery. Its subject deserved better.
Posted May 24, 2019
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Rafiki
(2018)
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Rick Levin
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Director Wanuri Kahiu deftly balances vibrant, expansive scenes of Kenyan street life with more-intimate peeks into the relationship between Kena and Ziki, evoking a very specific sense of time and place that only heightens the story's emotional impact.
Posted May 09, 2019
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Avengers: Endgame
(2019)
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Molly Templeton
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These broad-appeal movies have to please a lot of people just enough to keep us invested, and this one gets the job done.
Posted May 02, 2019
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High Life
(2018)
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Rick Levin
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Denis' film defies all categorization: If it's a sci-fi movie, so is Terrence Malick's Tree of Life, and if it's horror, so is David Lynch's Mulholland Drive.
Posted Apr 29, 2019
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Hellboy
(2019)
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Molly Templeton
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Hellboy wants to have it both ways, to cover familiar ground and present a new story, and it fails at both.
Posted Apr 25, 2019
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Us
(2019)
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Rick Levin
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Peele proves that he's not going to be content resting on his laurels, and that he's fearless and talented enough to hold a mirror up to our own worst selves - literally, it turns out.
Posted Apr 02, 2019
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Dragged Across Concrete
(2018)
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Rick Levin
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Dark, violent and, at times, wickedly funny, Zahler's film harkens to the golden era of independent film, though it's hardly an exercise in simple nostalgia.
Posted Mar 22, 2019
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Captain Marvel
(2019)
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Molly Templeton
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Captain Marvel is about Carol - it's not about saving the world, though that happens along the way. The antagonist, a brilliantly cast Ben Mendelsohn, is not the problem. Something much bigger - and subtler - is.
Posted Mar 20, 2019
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Micmacs
(2009)
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Molly Templeton
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Micmacs is clever, sweet, beautifully shot and disappointingly unsatisfying.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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Some Days Are Better Than Others
(2010)
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Molly Templeton
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[Matt] McCormick's eye for the small things that change a day, or a life, is sharp and compassionate; he finds the moments that initially seem unremarkable and follows them until they gradually transform into something greater.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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Tucker & Dale vs Evil
(2010)
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Molly Templeton
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Tucker and Dale is a surprisingly sweet movie, even when kids are chucking themselves into wood chippers or getting accidentally impaled on conveniently located sharp sticks.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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Mr. Nice
(2010)
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Molly Templeton
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Part of the problem with Mr. Nice is that the endless sequences of [Howard] Marks and company moving, packing, hiding or hiding drugs lead to a muddled, disconnected narrative that lacks emotional impact.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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Skeletons
(2010)
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Molly Templeton
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The way [Nick] Whitfield never bounds his characters' existences with biography, gives Skeletons the resonance of a short story that contains an entire life, painted on a tiny canvas but composed of vital details that tell all the important truths.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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Lemmy
(2010)
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Molly Templeton
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Lemmy is a fascinating, slightly overlong, almost-warts-and-all documentary about Motörhead's bassist/lead singer.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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Cold Weather
(2010)
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Molly Templeton
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Cold Weather is more formally lovely than any mumblecore film I've yet seen (and I do have a modest taste for the genre, if you can really call it that).
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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Skateland
(2010)
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Molly Templeton
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Skateland, Anthony Burns' 1983-set coming of age story, is warm, welcoming and seen through a high gloss of nostalgia.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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How to Train Your Dragon
(2010)
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Molly Templeton
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How to Train Your Dragon, an animated wonder of a film, does have often-familiar, heartwarming themes about individuality, acceptance, teamwork and prosthetics. It also has wicked awesome dragons...
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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Hood to Coast
(2011)
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Molly Templeton
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Lovingly pieced together from a patchwork of stories, Hood to Coast is gorgeously shot and cheerfully sincere.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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How to Die in Oregon
(2011)
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Molly Templeton
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For a film about death, How to Die in Oregon is awfully life-affirming.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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Transformers: Dark of the Moon
(2011)
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Molly Templeton
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The obnoxious and ungrateful shall inherit the Autobots, the power and the cash.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
(2011)
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Molly Templeton
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[The Best Exotic Marigold] Hotel charms while you're watching it, lightly pushes a few buttons (some unintentionally), and gives you little to chew on when you leave the theater.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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Beasts of the Southern Wild
(2012)
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Molly Templeton
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Beasts [of the Southern Wild] has the contradictory, inevitable, glorious feel of a myth, a folk tale about a place that never was but is everywhere, in a time that's entirely now and could have been decades ago.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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Lawless
(2012)
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Molly Templeton
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Complex, horrifying, pitch-perfect and exceedingly well acted, it's the near-brilliant film you never expected at the end of summer.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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Sleepwalk With Me
(2012)
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Molly Templeton
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Sleepwalk [With Me] takes familiar material and twists it slightly, bringing new themes into focus even as it relies heavily on [Mike] Birbiglia's tales of screwy gigs, stoic audiences and downright dangerous sleepwalking episodes.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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Elena
(2011)
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Molly Templeton
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Luxurious cinematography, careful choices about focus and editing, and excellent, constrained performances, particularly from [Nadezhda] Markina, give Elena much greater depths than its plot suggests.
Posted Feb 27, 2019
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Looper
(2012)
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Molly Templeton
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Looper embraces the paradox that's required for the two-Joes story to even happen, knotting improbability, vengeance and the notion of choice into a taut, sleek, imperfect but intelligent action movie.
Posted Feb 26, 2019
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Frankenweenie
(2012)
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Molly Templeton
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Frankenweenie, which made me cry almost as much as the audibly sobbing kids in the theater, is a big-hearted optimist's tale beautifully warped through Burton's trademark twisted vision.
Posted Feb 26, 2019
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