Although Saturday Night is marketed as a comedy, it is hardly a laugh-out-loud spectacle: it’s similar to the anxiety-inducing cinema affiliated with the Safdie brothers but with a comedic touch.
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We Live in Time’s strength lies in the acting. Garfield and Pugh elevate the film from a standard tearjerker to a cathartic exploration of the way that love, grief, and memory intersect.
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Of Unknown Origin (1983) is about a man trying to kill a rat. But this clever horror film is really about the lead character’s Ahabian obsession with both his rodent opponent and with his career success.
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Central Park (1989) and Canal Zone (1977), point especially to his knack for keen sound design and editing. Both restorations demonstrate Frederick Wiseman’s deliberate choices for aural transitions and building an immersive and rich soundscape that helps fill out the impressive scope of both projects.
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Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man (2024) just hit theaters and might be as medicinal for you as it was for Schimberg’s protagonist. It is as thought provoking as it is fun and pulls off the difficult task of being original, being a meaningful addition to a conversation and being clear.
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Fresh Kill is a neon-green love letter to what was then the new world of hacktivism, a playful form of civil disobedience attempting to disrupt and infiltrate the technological systems that control modern life by replacing algorithms with abstraction and logic with poetry.
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25 years later, Spice World is still the highest-grossing film of all time by a musical group. This is why the parody film still holds sway over its fans a quarter-century after release.
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Frederick Wiseman's documentaries The Store and Law and Order highlight different stages of sociopolitical change, through plainly depicting his subjects with as little interpretive framework as possible.
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A fanatical community of misogynistic Dutch people, or powerful, skittery, and kind of sexy forest demons? Oh, what a decision for down-on-her luck villager Frieda (Anneke Sluiters, Flikken Rotterdam) to make in Didier Konings’ Witte Wieven.
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From the outset, Get Away perpetually winks at the audience. The comedy comes from a family’s obliviousness to numerous foreboding signifiers of doom, though Frost’s script goes back to that well so much it starts to run dry by the second act.
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With The Substance, Coralie Fargeat goes beyond surface-level depictions of double standards and female rageto not only show flawed, complex women, but also the social conditions shaping their everyday lives.
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Ted Post's The Baby (1973) tells the story of a woman stricken with grief, looking to help an underdeveloped adult man trapped within the warped remains of a nuclear family.
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Based on the short story by John Cheever (1964), The Swimmer (1968) is a surrealist drama that has achieved cult status since its release.
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The 2024 Crow is substantially more lore-heavy than Alex Proyas’ 1994 take on the comic, but it’s all so much nothing.
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The Front Room covers what it says on the tin: Old people are gross, weird, and maybe a little evil.
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Outside of showcasing the fun of mushroom trips, My Old Ass announces the arrival of an exciting young star. In a role that brings to mind Emma Stone’s earlier role in the excellent Easy A, Maisy Stella brings the perfect blend of heart and humor to director and writer Megan Park’s (The Fallout) latest film.
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Sleuth is the diabolically entertaining tale of two men engaged in an increasingly high stakes competition of wits, will, and imagination.
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For a movie about supernatural revenge against a cadre of scumbags, The Crow is remarkably sweet-hearted. Combine that sweetness with Lee’s work, solid action, and an impeccable feel, look, and sound, and there’s a reason that Proyas and crew’s picture remains well-loved. Would that it was just one of many pictures in Lee’s filmography rather than a memorial.
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The American version of this type of hero usually involves a man who derives his virtue from rugged, individualist morality, while Riki derives his virtue from popular, collectivist traditionalism.
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Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut Blink Twice aims to mirror the success of recent social satire thrillers, but is neither smart nor subtle enough to be anything but a total misfire.
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