How much mercenary sex, rampant pill-popping, craven inhumanity, horrific violence, and full-on incest does David Cronenberg have to put into his Hollywood satire before you get the point? Really? That much, huh? Okay, here goes. Julianne Moore caps off her recent triumph as Best Actress in Still Alice with the …
A gentle story that is no less profound for being so. Michael Almereyda directs and adapts Jordan Harrison’s play about memory — and also, what it means to be a person. Put less abstractly: various members of a wealthy, melancholy family spend time chatting with holographic computer simulations of deceased …
Kids: stay in school, especially if you plan on becoming an astronaut. When a freak accident (wind-loosed antenna piercing bio-monitor) leads to his being stranded on the red planet, astro-botanist Matt Damon decides he ain't got time to muse on fate, the fragility of existence, or man's place in the …
Fifteen years after Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, director Garth Davis offers a sort of spiritual and tonal counterpoint: a Jesus story that stresses what might be called the more feminine aspect of his visit to earth — told, fittingly enough, through his relationship with the woman whom …
Near the end of Josie Rourke’s pox-and-all rendition of Mary Stuart’s misadventures in monarchy (at the outset, she is former Queen of France, current Queen of Scotland, and hopeful Queen of England), the beleaguered Catholic asks her Protestant cousin Elizabeth (Margot Robbie), “How did it come to this?” We know …
Happily, and despite the fact that director Paul Thomas Anderson used controversial Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard as a model, The Master is more than a modernized rehash of the religious chicanery at the heart of Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. Rather, it is an exploration of broken humanity in …
Paul Schrader’s 2017 film First Reformed gave us a solitary man who is keeping a journal; who deals with an intense and intimate crisis before learning that the real enemy is larger, more powerful, and less personal; and who just might find salvation via a compassionate woman. Then, 2021’s The …
If they’d spent half as much time on the jokes, relationships, characters, and yes, even plot as they did on the late ‘90s wardrobe, goofy hairstyling, and tacky makeup…it might have been a fun film about bumbling white trash looking to better its lot via $17 million armored-car heist. (Has …
An unsentimental but emotional film for anyone who suspects in their heart of hearts that suffering really is the only thing that makes anyone worth a damn. Particularly if it is borne gracefully, but also if it’s not. Sometimes, it’s enough to simply remain in its presence. “Maudie” is Maud …
It's hard to criticize a film like Max, which tells the story of a military dog (!) who develops Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after his Marine master is killed in ugly circumstances (spoiler!), and is eventually entrusted to the Marine's sulky younger brother. (You might sulk too if your big …
Cherien Dabis (Amreeka) writes, directs, and stars in the story of May, a New York writer-type who made bank off her heritage — a book of meditations on Middle Eastern proverbs (just like the ones that serve as title cards!) — and is now returning home to Jordan to get …
The high concept: what if your YA dystopia actually felt more like a utopia? What if, instead of sterile, mechanized conformity or brutal, desperate want, you lived in an idyllic glade whose civilizational contours you had forged yourself? What if your overlords kept you well supplied, but otherwise, left you …
Director Wes Ball’s final installment of this YA dystopia trilogy about a zombie plague-ravaged world, the plucky teens lucky enough to be immune, and the desperate scientists who want to harvest that immunity by any means necessary is... not great. But it’s better than it has any right to be, …
Part two of Wes Ball's (The Maze Runner) adaptation of the hit YA trilogy runs and runs and ultimately stumbles on its way to part three. But first, there’s lots of running, both from evil authority figures who want to harvest our heroes to help fight against the zombie plague, …