|
|
Whitney Cummings: Can I Touch It?
(2019)
|
Emma Grey Ellis
|
Cummings takes easy gender jokes and delivers them slightly askew, updated for the off-kilter moment women are living in right now...Cummings isn't afraid to take women to task for their outdated behavior, either.
Posted Aug 06, 2019
|
|
|
The Great Hack
(2019)
|
Emily Dreyfuss
|
If you want to see, really see the way data tracking, harvesting, and targeting takes the strands of information we generate and ties them around us until we are smothered by governments and companies, then don't miss the film.
Posted Jul 25, 2019
|
|
|
Spider-Man: Far From Home
(2019)
|
Angela Watercutter
|
Spider-Man: Far From Home is a wonderfully good time. It's also, in many ways, incredibly predictable.
Posted Jul 02, 2019
|
|
|
Dark Phoenix
(2019)
|
Angela Watercutter
|
It would be impossible for a movie with this roster of talent to be truly awful, but look, Dark Phoenix isn't a good movie.
Posted Jun 07, 2019
|
|
|
Rim of the World
(2019)
|
Adam Rogers
|
It's a fun ride through childhood friendship forged amid killer aliens and saving the world. Sound like a 1980s-style adventure, like what Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment used to make? Well, good.
Posted Jun 01, 2019
|
|
|
Clash of the Titans
(2010)
|
Hugh Hart
|
The CGI- and animatronics-powered monsters might have fried eyeballs five years ago but now wow only in fits and starts.
Posted Mar 28, 2019
|
|
|
Us
(2019)
|
Jason Parham
|
If Us is a film that privileges swell-and it very much is, sometimes to a fault-here, Peele embraces that bloat with brilliance and flair.
Posted Mar 22, 2019
|
|
|
Captive State
(2019)
|
Jason Parham
|
Captive State doesn't need to shout; it works just fine as a contained rendering of the failures of democracy and its bleeding consequences.
Posted Mar 15, 2019
|
|
|
Captain Marvel
(2019)
|
Angela Watercutter
|
Her discovery of that toughness is at the core of the movie, a female-specific origin story that challenges so many of those that came before it.
Posted Mar 12, 2019
|
|
|
Alita: Battle Angel
(2019)
|
Angela Watercutter
|
The whole movie is a setup for a punch line that never comes.
Posted Feb 19, 2019
|
|
|
High Flying Bird
(2019)
|
Jason Parham
|
The film sharply interrogates the risk of independence under the grip of Big Streaming.
Posted Feb 12, 2019
|
|
|
Glass
(2019)
|
Angela Watercutter
|
Its good guys and bad guys could teach Hollywood's caped crusaders a thing or two about saving the world-even if they can't be saved from the movie they're in.
Posted Jan 19, 2019
|
|
|
Creed II
(2018)
|
Jason Parham
|
Creed II is a safe bet-not because it lacks heart, but because it does exactly what you expect it to.
Posted Nov 27, 2018
|
|
|
Suspiria
(2018)
|
Angela Watercutter
|
Suspiria is what a remake should be-a reinvention of themes, not a slavish recreation of what's already been done. And what Guadagnino has done is turn Argento's themes into narrative ideas.
Posted Oct 26, 2018
|
|
|
Halloween
(2018)
|
Brian Raftery
|
The latest iteration...is the first to recapture the unfussy rigor of Carpenter's original.
Posted Oct 22, 2018
|
|
|
First Man
(2018)
|
Angela Watercutter
|
Had it not gone deep into the story of the person at its center, First Man would've fallen flat. Instead, it stuck the landing.
Posted Oct 12, 2018
|
|
|
A Star Is Born
(2018)
|
Angela Watercutter
|
It's Gaga at her best, raw and fearless-and there's nothing more all-consuming than watching her rise.
Posted Oct 04, 2018
|
|
|
The Predator
(2018)
|
Brian Raftery
|
An action-comedy at once incomprehensible and inconsequential, and so unfun-dumb that its stupidity feels like a contagion.
Posted Sep 13, 2018
|
|
|
Searching
(2018)
|
Brian Raftery
|
Maybe the real reason the movie works so effectively is that, while watching David struggle through a dense and semi-menacing online world, we're also quietly searching for ourselves.
Posted Sep 10, 2018
|
|
|
Crazy Rich Asians
(2018)
|
Jason Parham
|
A movie of necessary firsts and communal heart.
Posted Aug 17, 2018
|
|
|
BlacKkKlansman
(2018)
|
Jason Parham
|
It doesn't just pack the visual audacity of a modern Blaxploitation epic, but-with Lee's tongue-slick message of overthrowing The Man-the framework as well.
Posted Aug 14, 2018
|
|
|
Mudbound
(2017)
|
Jason Parham
|
Mudbound is a textured and unsettling work, and the question is not merely one of sight... but also a narrative about love, family, and land, and how race complicates and binds these forces.
Posted Aug 07, 2018
|
|
|
Hannah Gadsby: Nanette
(2018)
|
Peter Rubin
|
Gadsby forces you to feel another person's pain and strength, but does so in a way that also causes you to interrogate your own position.
Posted Aug 01, 2018
|
|
|
Hannah Gadsby: Nanette
(2018)
|
Angela Watercutter
|
Everything she was saying-about art, about the tools of comedy, about the strength of broken people who rebuild themselves-hit like a locomotive.
Posted Aug 01, 2018
|
|
|
Rewind This!
(2013)
|
Angela Watercutter
|
What's compelling about Rewind This! isn't that there are so many people who love one particular media format... it's how the film unearths a strong nostalgia for a time isn't even really that long ago.
Posted Jul 19, 2018
|
|
|
Sorry to Bother You
(2018)
|
Jason Parham
|
Sorry to Bother You is a deliciously untame thing: an allegorical satire about the exploitation of labor and land.
Posted Jul 10, 2018
|
|
|
Ant-Man and The Wasp
(2018)
|
Angela Watercutter
|
Truly, lean-and-meanness is Ant-Man and the Wasp's greatest gift.
Posted Jul 05, 2018
|
|
|
Ocean's 8
(2018)
|
Angela Watercutter
|
Ocean's 8 is doing part of what it set out to do-prove that a previously bro-tastic franchise could be executed with the same success rate with a cast of women. Behold: It is proven.
Posted Jun 08, 2018
|
|
|
Ghost Rider
(2007)
|
Annalee Newitz
|
This movie is stupid in the best possible way. I cheered all the way through - my shrieks of glee echoing off the walls.
Posted May 25, 2018
|
|
|
Solo: A Star Wars Story
(2018)
|
Brian Raftery
|
As an expansion of the Star Wars saga, Solo is absolutely inessential. But as a movie, it's often surprisingly delightful.
Posted May 24, 2018
|
|
|
Black Panther
(2018)
|
Jason Parham
|
Technically lush, Black Panther infuses itself with diasporic hybridity.
Posted May 23, 2018
|
|
|
The Disaster Artist
(2017)
|
Brian Raftery
|
As The Disaster Artist proves, it's all the more sweet when you can share that dream with as many others as possible.
Posted May 23, 2018
|
|
|
Ready Player One
(2018)
|
Peter Rubin
|
[The film] is a caper, a breezy, stock-charactered scavenger hunt that manages to overcome its virtual stakes and its frequently clunky dialog to be as big and loud and fun as a romp through nerd-culture history should be.
Posted May 23, 2018
|
|
|
Avengers: Infinity War
(2018)
|
Angela Watercutter
|
Ten years in, Marvel has managed to keep everyone along for the ride.
Posted May 22, 2018
|
|
|
Alien: Covenant
(2017)
|
Charlie Jane Anders
|
The result is a movie where the biggest money shots feel largely obligatory -- just killers and filler, nothing more.
Posted May 19, 2018
|
|
|
Pacific Rim Uprising
(2018)
|
Angela Watercutter
|
Uprising is nothing more than the wedding-band cover version of Pacific Rim.
Posted May 17, 2018
|
|
|
Deadpool 2
(2018)
|
Angela Watercutter
|
Deadpool 2 doesn't just match the original-it cuts it off at the knees and gives its hero a whole new set of legs to run on. (This is both a metaphor and an actual plot point.)
Posted May 17, 2018
|
|
|
Looper
(2012)
|
Angela Watercutter
|
A sci-fi film for action fans, a drama for futuristic-fetish geeks, and a gangster movie for... well, pretty much anyone.
Posted May 17, 2018
|
|
|
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
(2017)
|
Brian Raftery
|
It's a movie that lures you in with the familiar and the beloved, only to instead turn into something wiser, deeper, and more true than you could have ever guessed.
Posted Dec 12, 2017
|
|
|
Justice League
(2017)
|
Angela Watercutter
|
The movie, basically, is a collection of subreddits on celluloid-some good, some bad, all there.
Posted Nov 21, 2017
|
|
|
Thor: Ragnarok
(2017)
|
Angela Watercutter
|
Pulling off a feat like this in the current Marvel movie universe might be Thor's most heroic feat yet.
Posted Nov 02, 2017
|
|
|
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
(2017)
|
Charlie Jane Anders
|
[King Arthur] telegraphs from the beginning how desperately it wants to be Game of Thrones.
Posted May 12, 2017
|
|
|
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
(2017)
|
Angela Watercutter
|
If you like superhero flirting, bonding, and not-too-graphic dick jokes, it's a hoot. There might even be a tearjerker or two. But if you're hoping for something radically different from the first Guardians, you might be disappointed.
Posted May 05, 2017
|
|
|
Life
(2017)
|
Angela Watercutter
|
While you're watching Ryan Reynolds and Jake Gyllenhaal gamely trying to hunk up Life's Alien-lite premise and predictable twist ending, your mind will wander-and at some point you'll wonder when big space movies became such an unrelenting snooze.
Posted May 03, 2017
|
|
|
Kong: Skull Island
(2017)
|
Angela Watercutter
|
[Vogt-Robert's] film is still very much a Kong movie-it has a giant ape destroying things, that's pretty much all you need-but it thankfully forgoes unnecessary retreading of the 1976 and 2005 films.
Posted May 03, 2017
|
|
|
Personal Shopper
(2016)
|
Angela Watercutter
|
Kristen Stewart has had to hold her own against an array of costars: vampires; a Huntsman; Juliette Binoche. But in her new film, Personal Shopper, she does her best acting yet.
Posted May 03, 2017
|
|
|
Logan
(2017)
|
Angela Watercutter
|
That rage-filled, drunk, foul-mouthed Logan who never got to fully surface in the previous X-Men movies is finally joining his buddy Deadpool in the world of grown-up cinema. And it's the perfect way for him to end his run.
Posted May 03, 2017
|
|
|
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
(2016)
|
Angela Watercutter
|
By all measures, Rogue One succeeds; it's a thrilling, well-told, Star Wars movie that will scratch any fan's itch.
Posted May 03, 2017
|
|
|
Ex Machina
(2014)
|
Angela Watercutter
|
Like Her, Ex Machina is a smart, beautiful film. But when the only female lead in your movie is one whose function is to turn the male lead on while being in a position to be turned off, that says a lot about what you think of the value of women in films.
Posted May 03, 2017
|
|
|
Captain America: Civil War
(2016)
|
Angela Watercutter
|
It's that balance of slugfest and gabfest that ends up being Civil War's greatest strength.
Posted May 03, 2017
|
>
