Movie Reviews (Chronological)
Emergency is not what it looks like
Can this friendship survive the worst night ever? Kunle and Sean — and, to a degree, the cannabis-clouded Carlos — are spiraling down into crisis as they try to save a stranger in this funny but sobering “calamity comedy.”
Cronenberg’s performance-art surgery
In Cronenberg’s latest sci-fi nightmare, human bodies are evolving and surgeons are bringing brand new organs out into the spotlight… in public, as performance art. It’s unsettling. It’s meaningful. And it’s hilarious.
Maverick and Me: Part Two
As an action movie, Top Gun: Maverick is compelling entertainment. As art, it exists more as a celebration of Tom Cruise, exalting a version of reckless masculinity and whiteness that I might have hoped we’d left behind.
Maverick and Me: Part One
Before diving fast and furious into a review of Top Gun: Maverick, I should probably provide some personal history about me and Maverick.
Catch the rare treasure Petite Maman on the big screen if you can
Like Jacques Doillon’s Ponette and John Sayles’s The Secret of Roan Inish, Céline Sciamma’s new film is about very young children living with loss and grief. And, like those films, it casts an unforgettable spell. Don’t miss it!
Conflicted about The Northman’s conflict
With full respect for arguments to the contrary, I’m of a mind to say that Robert Eggers’s The Northman, while very clearly in the category of “Not My Kind of Movie,” is a complex and meaningful film that deserves heavy cautions, the raising of certain concerns, and considerable praise. Viewer discretion is very forcefully advised.
Alas, it may be too late for you to see one of 2022’s most enthralling cinematic experiences
The greatest films are becoming the most difficult to see in a theater. Memoria — the third transcendent cinematic experience I’ve enjoyed in 2022 — is, like the others, one that moviegoers will have to seek out on their own, and they’re unlikely to ever see it on a big screen.
Joel Coen’s Macbeth adaptation is visually striking — but unaffecting
Did social distancing influence this Joel Coen production of the Scottish play? It has some great actors in it, but their performances seem strangely separate. And the film’s striking images seem more like a gallery of evocative stills than immersive cinema.
A zigzagging walk through the highs and lows of Villeneuve’s Dune
Six or seven sentences on Dune. Well… six or seven long, detailed sentences. I can probably hold myself to that. That’s what I’ve been telling myself. Maybe if I force myself to sum up, in just a few lines, my first impressions of Denis...
Discovering “Devi”
During November’s Barnes and Noble Criterion sale, I took a chance on a film I’ve never seen before. I am so glad that I did. It’s one of the great films about the possibilities and the dangers of religious faith.