The Brutalist Is a Confounding but Beautiful Mess
The Brutalist is a big and bold story of the immigrant experience and the postwar American dream. It’s confounding yet always interesting — a heartening thing in these cinematically tough times.
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Emilia Pérez Is the Ultimate Unloved Oscar Nominee
Despite Emilia Pérez’s mixed reviews and poor audience reactions, Hollywood handed the musical 13 Oscar nominations in the hopes of proving its progressive bona fides. Then old tweets from its star surfaced.
Love Hurts, and So Does Going to This Movie
Love Hurts is the Valentine’s Day–themed action movie you never asked for.
Young Snipers in Love Across The Gorge
Apple TV+’s The Gorge finds two attractive young snipers, Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy, flirting across the abyss as they guard the gates of hell below. It’s a promising premise, but it never pays off.
Severance Is an Indictment of Workplace Hell
Apple’s dystopian workplace thriller Severance entered its second season as a genuine cultural phenomenon. With its brutal satire of the American corporate structure, it’s easy to see why.
Black Bag: Not Much to See Here
Black Bag is being hailed by critics as highly sophisticated cinematic fare — rather than an unambitious rush job by a talented director eager to move on to his next, similarly unsatisfying project.
Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17 Misfires
Bong Joon-ho’s follow-up to Parasite is another darkly comic satire of our capitalist hellscape. But even with Robert Pattinson and sharp lefty themes, Mickey 17’s comedy is cringe and its pace glacial.
RIP to Gene Hackman, the Everyman Actor
Legendary actor Gene Hackman, who was found dead this week at 95, brought a tough, working-class attitude to his mesmerizing performances.
In Praise of French Poetic Realism
In the 1930s, the French realist filmmakers found a way to speak to and fight against the rising authoritarianism in their country and the world.
I’m Still Here Is Worthy of Oscar Hype
Walter Salles’s I’m Still Here is the true story of a left-wing political family in Brazil caught up in the dark days of the military dictatorship. It’s a riveting story with incredible character and period detail that deserves an Oscar this Sunday.
The Fantastic Failure of The Lone Ranger
At least Verbinski tries to bring intelligent, politically-savvy revisionist westerns back into style.
Don’t Blame Rachel Zegler for Snow White
The press is blaming the young and very online actor Rachel Zegler for Snow White’s dismal box office showing. But Zegler’s performance as the original Disney princess is the only bright spot in an otherwise cynical cash grab.
Regrounding Hollywood
Gravity points us back to the sensation cinema practices of the silent era, and it’s dimly possible that the American film industry might save itself by learning, or re-learning, from them.
The Monkey as Sleeper Horror Hit
It’s been a rough year for movies so far — which makes the new horror hit The Monkey an enjoyable surprise.
George Bailey’s Shrinkage
It’s a Wonderful Life of lowered expectations.
A Minecraft Movie Is as Bad as It Is Popular
Based on the best-selling video game of all time, A Minecraft Movie is officially a megahit. If this is Hollywood’s savior, we’re all doomed.
Warfare Is Hell at the Movies
Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza’s Warfare is another combat movie that promises to make war look like hell but instead makes it look like a thrilling trial by fire for young men to prove themselves.
Sinners Is the Non-IP Hit Hollywood Needed
Ryan Coogler’s vampires ’n’ blues thriller Sinners is everything Hollywood tells us the masses don’t want: Set a hundred years in the past, it’s not a sequel, reboot, or adaptation of anything. And yet it’s a smash hit with moviegoers.
The Grim Timeliness of “Noir and the Blacklist”
A new Criterion series of McCarthy-era noir films is a timely collection for an era of rising government repression — though you wouldn’t know it from Criterion’s oddly subdued promotion.
The Legend of Ochi Is a Handcrafted Kids’ Manifesto
The Legend of Ochi, a new A24 family film, combines live action, CGI, and old-fashioned puppetry to charming effect.