Andrea Riseborough may be our greatest under-appreciated actress working today. Delivering standout turns in indie favorites like Mandy, Possessor, and Birdman as well as leading Amazon’s excellent crime drama ZeroZeroZero, Riseborough has slowly proven herself a transfixing chameleon presence. A la the great Tilda Swinton, with whom she shares vampiric lily white skin and sharp...
Eco-horror is having a resurgence of late, as are psilocybin mushrooms as a visual language in film. Jaco Bouwer’s formidable woodland creeper Gaia fits snugly into a recent wave of psychedelic folk horror, a subgenre that binds Ari Aster’s Midsommar, Alex Garland’s Annihilation, Ben Wheatley’s In the Earth (a recent Sundance release that would make...
Hope is a hammer, Ady Barkan attempts to say. His tongue, lungs, and the rest of his body devastated by ALS (an incurable degenerative disease that paralyzes and eventually kills its victims), Ady tries again and again but just can’t get the words out to the audience of thousands gathered to hear the American healthcare...
In present-ish day Brazil, the fight for reparations for citizens of African descent reaches a violent impasse. Lawyer Antônio (Alfred Enouch) wants his government to impose equitable laws to atone for the nation’s past sins, chief amongst them slavery, but the fascistic government opts instead to offer a one-way ticket way “back to Africa” as...
Timing is a fickle thing and often means a world of difference. Timing divides those who murder the stock market and those that are steamrolled by it. It’s the difference between perfectly scrambled eggs and inedible burnt yellow mush. And in the case of recently broken-up Nick (Ben Coleman) and Leah (Ali Vingiano), bad timing...
A stirring dramatic thriller with a career-best onscreen turn from Benedict Cumberbatch, 'The Courier' explores the events of the Cold War through ground-level heroism, focusing on the human element and…
Sustained tension and an entirely creepy visual palette make 'Come True', a dreamy horror-hybrid about sleep paralysis, a heady haunter. Anthony Scott Burns announces himself as a thoughtful and novelly…
Disney Animation Studios one-ups their craftsmanship in the Asian-set adventure 'Raya and the Last Dragon', a beautiful-to-look-at effort that feels decidedly borrowed from establishment narratives. The jokey aspect works less…
At two and a half hours, ‘Cherry’ attempts to tackle war values, PTSD, drug addiction, teen romance, and crime but the decently-entertaining character study settles to skim the surface of…
Rosamund Pike leads a deliciously contemptible cast of characters in J Blakeson’s dark-satire-cum-crime-thriller 'I Care a Lot'. Though the film suffers the sin of having its cake and eating it too (and…