The Firestarter Remake Fails to Ignite
Stephen King’s original Firestarter novel was a product of post-Watergate rage toward the CIA. But horror production company Blumhouse’s second adaptation can’t keep the flame alive.
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Men Is Terrifying — Until It Succumbs to Its Big Ideas
Alex Garland’s Men is a horror movie about how awful it is to be a woman. But he’s so intent on driving this point home that all the terror drains out of the film by the end, and only annoyance at the didactic exercise remains.
Hollywood Never Fully Appreciated Ray Liotta’s Immense Talent
Ray Liotta has died suddenly at the age of 67. He should have been a major star — but after his greatest role in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, we never really got a chance to see everything he could do.
The Bob’s Burgers Movie Sides With Working-Class Eccentrics
The cult-favorite TV show Bob's Burgers is now a movie — and it works, even if its low-key charms don’t always dazzle on the big screen.
Top Gun: Maverick Is Another Military Recruitment Video Disguised as a Movie
The hotly anticipated sequel to Top Gun, the 1986 movie that made Tom Cruise a star, is raking in cash, great reviews, and even Oscar buzz. Don’t be fooled — it’s the same glorified military recruitment video that the original was.
David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future Has Me Missing His Early Stuff
David Cronenberg’s latest film, Crimes of the Future, is a return to the “body horror” genre. It brings back the gross-out gore that first made his career in the 1970s — but without the thrills.
Danny Boyle’s Pistol Sells Punk — and the Sex Pistols — Short
How can someone take a band as exciting, wild, and innovative as the Sex Pistols and make such a conventional, paint-by-numbers miniseries? With Pistol, Danny Boyle found a way.
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande Has a “Magic Sex Worker” Problem
Critics are fawning over Good Luck to You, Leo Grande for its “brave” sex positivity. But the crowd-pleasing comedy is actually anxiously prescriptive, and it relies on an angelic and selfless sex worker to teach a middle-aged woman how to love her body.
The Zone of Interest Is Much More Than a Holocaust Film
Jonathan Glazer’s haunting new film The Zone of Interest follows the life of an Auschwitz commandant in 1943 as his family goes about their business with the horrors of the Holocaust just on the other side of a wall. It’s mesmerizing and unsettling.
Baz Luhrmann Is Giving Us a Good, Clean Elvis for the 21st Century
Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis tries to sell audiences on a sanitized version of the King, missing the much weirder, wilder, and messier truth of his life and career.
The Strenuous Comedy of Thor: Love and Thunder
Taika Waititi’s second Thor film doubles down on his trademark mix of silliness and somberness. It still works — but it might not survive another sequel.
Netflix Bets Big on The Gray Man and Loses
With its stock cratering and its audience shrinking, Netflix needs a savior. But The Gray Man, a bloated and boring $200 million action movie, is unlikely to be it.
Fictional Teen Dystopias Reflect Real Capitalist Nightmares
Dystopian teen films will remain popular as long as they keep reflecting truths about young people’s prospects under capitalism.
Wes Anderson and the Old Regime
With The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson has reached the dizzying point of fantasizing about feeling nostalgic for nostalgia itself.
Toy Story 5 Takes On the Existential Dread of Big Tech
A kids’ movie about tech addiction and the terror of being obsolete? Of course Toy Story 5 is a hit — we’re all living through it.
Young Washington: A Simpleminded Take on Our First President
The Christian conservative Angel Studios’ Young Washington feels more like a MAGA political project than a movie. Sadly, it’s the exact kind of paint-by-numbers George Washington biopic you would’ve expected.
They Shoot Oscars, Don’t They?
The Oscar ceremony has finally acquired an ideal twenty-first century host in the smirking, tap-dancing, bland-faced Seth MacFarlane.
The Genius of Silicon Valley
Despite his libertarianism, Mike Judge’s Silicon Valley tears apart tech elites with a ruthless precision we haven’t seen since Office Space
Primetime Turns Chris Hansen Into a Horror Show
Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime casts Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen and bathes him in hellfire-red close-ups. The result is a grimy fever dream about the ugly thrills of televised punishment. It is very much a movie for our times.
When Revenge Goes Wrong
Instead of a captivating revenge film, The Revenant quickly becomes an overwrought mess.