All Film Reviews

The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part (PG)

The LEGO Movie is the best American animated feature film of the last decade. The LEGO Movie 2 is not. It’s not even the second best – that crown probably goes to Toy Story 3 – but I would put it in my top five. Stylistically, the sequel is just as strong as any of the other LEGO releases, which is […]
Roma (R)

One of the greatest strengths of film as an art form is its innate ability to create a sense of empathy. The most affecting films are the ones we relate to most closely, not necessarily because we sympathize, which is merely to feel sorrow for a misfortunate without ever truly understanding the deeper connotations behind it, […]
Bohemian Rhapsody (PG-13)

Strip away the controversy surrounding Bohemian Rhapsody, and all that’s left is a typical awards-bait biopic that’s not as bad as you’d feared. Nor is it as good as you’d hoped; it just sort of exists, with the occasional inspired moment and plenty of dull passages to fill the space in between those. In many ways, there […]
If Beale Street Could Talk (R)

Born out of the same unobtrusive intimacy as Barry Jenkins’s previous offering, Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk is a visually lush and poetic laudation of the mysterious and transcendental thing that is love. It’s a celebration of love’s redemptive propensity and its healing properties. Yet more than that, If Beale Street Could Talk is […]
Split (PG-13)

Whether you love him or hate him, you simply cannot deny that writer-director M. Night Shyamalan is a singular voice, something of increasing rarity in modern American cinema. Once celebrated, there was a dark period for Shyamalan where his name elicited groans rather than excitement from the general public. In some ways, that’s unfair, since […]
BlacKkKlansman (R)

Back in the summer of 1989, Spike Lee lit a joint that critics said was sure to cause riots and incite anger among young African American males. With a boombox in its hand and a “fight the power!” on its lips, the director’s third feature film polarized audiences, with some hailing it as one of […]
Leave No Trace and the Gift of Fellowship (PG)

“It was a rough year.” This sentiment always begins its annual excursion as December comes to a close; in that tiresome week’s span during which Christmas is behind us and the short-lived joys of new year’s resolutions are ahead, there’s little to consider but the disappointments and shortcomings yielded from the last twelve months. And now, […]
Vox Lux (R)

“That’s the thing about pop music,” a young Celeste muses, “I don’t want people to have to think too hard, I just want them to feel good.” And yet, that line of thinking is a trap, a great deception that allows the artist to pull the wool over the audience’s eyes. Young Celeste, after all, […]
Cold War (R)

Paweł Pawlikowski’s austerely beautiful Cold War begins with villagers performing a folk song about a man standing at his lover’s door, begging her to “open up.” This sense of longing courses through the film: to watch Cold War is to feel oneself hovering on the threshold of something mysterious, inaccessible, and slow to open itself […]
The Favourite (R)

According to Hegel, every major historical event repeats itself twice; according to Marx’s notorious addendum, the first time is a tragedy, the second a farce. Most things happen twice in The Favourite, but director Yorgos Lanthimos reverses the rhythm so farce gives way to tragedy, or else layers the two over each other until we cannot tell […]
Mary Poppins Returns (PG)

Although it’s somewhat of a cornball statement, and it’s certainly not applicable to this modern era of the House of Mouse, there really is some kind of Disney Magic. You’d have to go back several decades at this point to see that magic in action, but there was a time when Walt Disney Pictures knew […]
Aquaman (PG-13)

When FilmFisher’s managing editor Timothy Lawrence asked me to review Aquaman, I groaned. I had only seen one DC film since Man of Steel (which I loathe), and that was the Marvel-esque Wonder Woman. I have heard tales of how Batman v. Superman, Suicide Squad, and Justice League are incredibly awful. Therefore I was not […]
It’s a Wonderful Life (PG)

Scrooge’s nephew calls Christmas “a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the […]
Green Book (PG-13)

Peter Farrelly’s Green Book is a lesson to all Americans: Black Lives really do Matter, and, just maybe, all lives matter too. A house divided against itself cannot stand, but the division this country is now faced with is not one of race, sex, gender, sexuality, or any other label. It is a division of […]
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (PG)

I love Spider-Man. To be more specific, I love Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man. That isn’t to say I don’t love any other iteration of the character but it is the standard with which I judge all other iterations. Perhaps it isn’t the most objective, and it certainly isn’t the most ideal. While I think it is the […]
Bumblebee (PG-13)

To watch Bumblebee is to be caught in the middle of a tug-of-war between two different movies. One is a forgettable blockbuster and wannabe franchise reboot about toys from the 1980s, and the other is an efficient if not novel throwback to children’s adventure films of that decade like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. In the end, […]
Widows (R)

You’ll have to forgive me. It’s been nearly three weeks since I initially saw Widows. Immediately after the screening, I felt very positively about the film, which I thought leveraged some really great technical filmmaking and a game cast to offset a messy script with too many threads and a pretty weak late-game twist. But in […]
The Other Side of the Wind (R)

“The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.” – Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time “A fact of life: […]
Ralph Breaks the Internet (PG)

I would probably do well to confess up front that I am not really the right person to review Ralph Breaks the Internet. I harbor no fondness for its predecessor, Wreck-It Ralph, which I saw once upon its release in 2012 – and, while I’m being frank, I have not really enjoyed a new animated […]
You Were Never Really Here (R)

Lynne Ramsay’s 2018 film You Were Never Really Here begins with a sigh — or perhaps more of a gasp. We’ve cut from a black screen to an image of Joaquin Phoenix’s character Joe, his head wrapped in a plastic bag, slowly breathing in and out. With each exhalation the bag inflates, allowing space, breathing […]