All Film Reviews

Dune (PG-13)

For many years, my only impression of Dune was that it was to Star Wars as Game of Thrones is to Lord of the Rings: the “adult version,” which is to say, the version that mistakes darkness for sophistication, cynicism for maturity, explicit sex and violence for being “grown up.” Last year, reading Frank Herbert’s […]
Last Night in Soho (R)

Nostalgia is a bitter pill to swallow. Far too often, whenever we paint a portrait of the past, it’s very much an idealized vision: only the glitz and the glamour and never the harsh realities. Edgar Wright’s latest film, Last Night in Soho – and, indeed, his whole filmography – feels like the director is trying to […]
No Time to Die (PG-13)

Leading up to the release of the twenty-fifth James Bond film, No Time to Die, Travis Kyker and Timothy Lawrence collaborated on a retrospective of Daniel Craig’s first four outings as Bond. You can read that conversation here. What follows is their discussion of the new movie, which brings Craig’s run as Bond to a […]
Malignant (R)

Most genre filmmakers would kill to have a career trajectory like James Wan’s. Not only did his feature debut Saw put him on the map, but it also proved his touch had a ripple effect, the ability to influence trends within the genre. By the time the Conjuring franchise rolled around and was a critical […]
The Green Knight (R)

Although the film is officially titled The Green Knight, the first title card we see reads, “Sir Gawain and…” At first glance, this seems to reinforce the centrality of the hero (Dev Patel), aspiring Knight of the Round Table and nephew to King Arthur (Sean Harris). Each of the subsequent title cards announcing his episodic adventures […]
Old (PG-13)

We don’t appreciate M. Night Shyamalan enough. Sure, his career has had its fair share of bruises, and it sometimes feels like those misfires have overshadowed his best films. That he’s refused to hang up his hat and has now navigated himself into something of a small comeback with his recent crop of self-funded, small-budgeted […]
Silent Light (Not Rated)

There is an adage you and I have heard many times, which is that every day is a new miracle. I can never hear it without wondering about the underlying sentiment. What is really miraculous about a new day? The survival of our geological sphere through another night? The laws of nature continuing to function […]
Black Widow (PG-13)

First things first: It was great to be inside a movie theater again. (That business of seeing Tenet in October and having the feeling Christopher Nolan would be the death of me doesn’t, doesn’t count.) If nothing else, I can always look back fondly on Black Widow as the occasion for my celebratory return to […]
Luca (PG)

“You are probably too young to remember this,” I once told my high school students, “But Pixar used to make good movies.” Like many of the things I say to get a rise out of the youngsters, the statement had an element of hyperbole to it…
Godzilla vs. Kong (PG-13)

Say what you will about Marvel movies: when Captain America and Iron Man came to blows in Captain America: Civil War, at least the filmmakers played it as a tragedy, not a gladiator match. The use of “v.” instead of “vs.” in the title Batman v. Superman made it sound more like a Supreme Court […]
Arsenic and Old Lace (Not Rated)

“What’s your favorite film?” It’s the question every cinephile delights to hear, yet also dreads. Delights, because finally someone made this social function less awkward — and besides, who doesn’t want to extol their loves before others? Dreads, because who can pick just one movie?
Green Room (R)

The recent trailer for the now delayed Dune reminded us that “Fear is the mind-killer.” This mantra is particularly appropriate for the tumultuous year of 2020, as well as the regular Halloween season. As we enter haunted corn mazes to be scared by costumed spooks or social distance at home and watch scary movies, we experience […]
Fright Night (R)

Here is a terrifying thought: we can’t outgrow monsters. Once they have been breathed into existence, there is no willing them away. They are eternal, the necessary evil that allows us to define better what goodness might look like. Their most frightening feature? The ability to adapt and survive and always find a way to feed off […]
The Birds (PG-13)

“Consider the birds of the air,” Christ tells us. The birds neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns, yet our heavenly Father feeds them, and so the birds remind us to depend on God, in faith, for our provision. Man is good at finding ways to provide for himself, though. Faith is something of […]
Nosferatu the Vampyre (PG)

Twilight aside, the most ubiquitous images of the vampire hail from the black and white era: Bela Lugosi’s Dracula, he of the endlessly parodied accent, and the elaborately gothic sets and shadows of F.W. Murnau’s silent Nosferatu. Werner Herzog’s 1979 remake of Murnau’s 1922 film is an odd beast, though. As Dracula, Klaus Kinski is […]
I’m Thinking of Ending Things (R)

I once had a math teacher tell me that any book that has to be read more than once to be understood isn’t a good book. At the time, I was not sure I agreed with her. If you asked me a few years ago, I would definitely have disagreed. Today, I am not so sure. To […]
The New Mutants (PG-13)

It may be three years late, but The New Mutants is finally here. Getting to watch what is now officially the final X-Men film made under 20th Century Fox’s banner was nothing short of surreal because, at one point, I really thought it might never be released.* Last summer, I wrote about how Disney absorbing 20th Century […]
Tenet (PG-13)

One suspects that Christopher Nolan became a filmmaker because film is a uniquely time-based art form. In Inception, minutes of waking life translate to hours of dream time; in Interstellar, an astronaut boards a spaceship shaped like a clock and travels into a black hole that stretches hours into years. Nolan is fascinated by time, […]
The Master (R)

Those who admire the films of Paul Thomas Anderson are no strangers to the labyrinths his thematic puzzle boxes construct — one could probably watch Magnolia half a dozen times in the span it would take to unravel all of its mysteries — and yet, The Master lingers tantalizingly even above this, the most oblique […]
Gran Torino (R)

Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) is a tall, white-haired, racist veteran of the Korean War trying to make sense of a changing America. The enjoyment he once found sharing his neighborhood with white folks has morphed into abjectly watching Hmong immigrants invade the homes around him. Faithful dog on one side and case of Pabst Blue Ribbon on the other, Walt is the weathered remnant of an America gone by.