Film Reviews, Interviews and Articles
Alex Novak is checked out. From his marriage. From himself. From whatever once brought him joy. The first moment we meet Alex, played with hangdog affability by Will Arnett, he amicably agrees to a separation with his wife Tess (Laura Dern, wonderful here) while they brush their teeth together. Their pending separation is met with all the nonchalance of agreeing on where to get Sunday night takeout. Because Alex Novak is checked out. Read More
A searing South Korean social satire about the accelerating impossibilities of employment in 2025, No Other Choice doesn’t give an inch. The new film from legendary director Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, The Handmaiden) stars Lee Byung-hun and Son Ye-jin as a husband and wife forced to reconsider their socioeconomic standing when patriarch Man-Su is laid off from his cushy white-collar job at a paper company looking to upscale efficiencies and downscale headcount. An updated reimagining of Donald E. Westlake’s 1997 horror thriller novel The Ax, the story follows Man-Su as he resorts to any means necessary to re-enter the workforce—including killing off his competition. After all, he has no other choice. Read More
Within the very first minutes of Marty Supreme, one thing is very clear: Josh had the juice. After the split between writing/directing duo Josh and Benny Safdie, each brother struck out to make their own riff on the sports drama. Benny’s The Smashing Machine, a shockingly flat biopic about Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson) and the early days of the UFC, revealed that, as I put it in my review, “he might not only benefit from a creative partner but actually need one. Alone, his work is startlingly inert.” The opposite is true of Josh Safdie. Marty Supreme, his fictionalized sports drama about a grifter table tennis player played by Timothée Chalamet in his best onscreen role yet, has more kinetic life and effortless energy in just the opening scene than the entirety of The Smashing Machine. While it’s not my intent to pit brother against brother in some carnivorous blood match of talent, it is striking to see the cinematic results of their cleaved relationship in such an apples-to-apples comparison. There is no contest: Marty Supreme reigns supreme. Read More
Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) just died. Fortunately for her, death comes with options. She gets to choose between a series of curated afterlives, each designed so she can spend a hand-selected eternity with the person she loved most. Unfortunately, she was married twice: first to Luke (Callum Turner), a dedicated soldier who died in war, and later to Larry (Miles Teller), with whom she shared 65 years and raised a family. So now Joan must decide between the smoldering heat of her first love and the cozy domesticity of her second. With A24 distributing and a respectable cast assembled, one might assume the existential rom-com Eternity would sidestep the genre’s tired clichés and deliver something meaningful. Instead, it sinks comfortably into the wreckage of the rom-com’s worst instincts, like a codependent relationship that’s too lazy to risk anything new. Though just mildly amusing and just mildly clever, Eternity is unmistakably formulaic, centering its drama on that tried and true love triangle truism: women be indecisive. Read More
“It was so wonderful.” That was my three-year-old daughter’s verdict after watching Zootopia 2, which marked both her first press screening and her first time seeing a movie in a theater. And I have to agree. Even if you remove the film’s actual quality from the equation, the experience itself—sharing one of my greatest joys with my wide-eyed little girl as she gleefully demolished popcorn and a sour apple ICEE—was pure movie magic. Read More
The therapeutic power of art reverberates through both creator and observer. There’s something that stirs the human spirit in encountering it, especially when it comes carved straight off the bone of the soul. And no emotion strikes deeper than the sorrow born of tragedy. In Chloé Zhao’s powerhouse of a dramatic tearjerker, Hamnet, tragedy and art are married through a human tapestry of love and loss. Buckle up and bring the Kleenex. Read More
Detective Benoit Blanc is back for the third edition of Rian Johnson’s irreverently charming neo-noir Netflix mystery series, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. This time knives (and, of course, a murder most foul) are indeed involved, but so is an unholy whodunnit that defies the logic of the material world: a locked-closet killing and an apparent resurrection used as profane misdirection when a slaying at an isolated church leaves everyone scratching their heads and praying to god for answers. The effect is another breezy, well-laid-out puzzle box from Johnson that spins its duplicitous webs, though it falls short of greatness due to an over-reliance on confessional exposition and an underdeveloped ensemble cast. Read More
Leaving the big city for a beat-up house deep in the Montana sticks, new parents Grace (Jennifer Lawrence, frequently nude) and Jackson (Robert Pattinson, less nude) are struggling to adjust. She’s a writer; he works with his hands in coveralls. Their rural life isn’t particularly fulfilling, and neither, unfortunately, is the film. From acclaimed auteur Lynne Ramsay (We Need to Talk About Kevin, You Were Never Really Here), Die My Love is a meandering plunge into postpartum ennui that captures its characters’ slow unraveling but drags the audience along for the same dreary ride without much in the way of reward. Read More
Other blockbusters take note: the Predator franchise just can’t seem to miss latest. The newest entry, its sixth live-action film, Badlands, is stripped to the stark white bone, yet still taps into the pulsing artery of what makes this movies like this so fundamentally compelling: a culture of necessity. There isn’t a single ounce of fat on Predator: Badlands, which is a lean, mean, killing-machine of a tentpole movie that tells a thrilling coming-of-age story through the lens of IP and somehow enriches both in the process. Director Dan Trachtenberg, now three for three in the Predator franchise, has emerged as something of a modern-day James Cameron, only leaner, less cringy, and frankly, more consistent. He understands that the best genre films aren’t just about the spectacle. They’re about how environments shapes the character as much as the plot and use special effects and thrilling fight sequences to further that idea. Read More
A twisted morality play-cum-psychological thriller with a maybe-science-fiction bite – one that only Yorgos Lanthimos could execute at this level – Bugonia may be a remake, but it’s still infused with vivid originality and alive with possibility. The story of a radicalized gig worker and his slow-witted cousin who kidnap a powerful biochem CEO (convinced she’s an alien from the Andromeda galaxy) plays out as a tense, one-location two-hander that crackles with the high-voltage energy of Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone. It’s unnerving, darkly funny, sharply acted, and loaded with just enough satirical commentary on the tragedy of modern life to keep it gripping from its bleak opening moments to its glorious finish. Read More