Provocative and evocative. These two words are the best way to sum up João Pedro Rodrigues’ strange film The Ornithologist. Attempting to put a queer spin on the mythos of St. Anthony of Padua, Rodrigues charts […]
Paddington 2 (King, 2017)
We are lucky to have a film so pure, so in tune with what is right and decent, and so hugely entertaining as Paddington 2 is. I remember being similarly enchanted by the first film, despite initially […]
War for the Planet of the Apes (Reeves, 2017)
I am a little bummed that War for the Planet of the Apes was not a step up from Dawn, as Dawn was a step up from Rise. If memory serves, Dawn interweaved themes of loyalty, betrayal, and compassion into a genuinely crackling […]
Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (James, 2016)
It is a testament to Steve James that he can turn a subject that, by all accounts, is best understood by a small subset of the population (namely, a federal savings bank being prosecuted by […]
The Boss Baby (McGrath, 2017)
There’s a clever concept here. The story has an anti-capitalist bent, revealing the exhausting impact of mass commoditization and empty corporate hierarchies. In such a culture, there is no time—nay, no room for the nuclear family, and […]
Roman J. Israel, Esq. (Gilroy, 2017)
I don’t really know if Roman J. Israel, Esq. can be summed up in a few sentences—and maybe that’s why it was largely tossed aside when it was released a few months ago. In lieu of tightly-woven […]
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Abrams, 2015)
I do think that The Force Awakens leans a little too heavily on the mythos of the first trilogy, almost repackaging the journeyman hero elements of A New Hope and sending it out to us as though it were […]
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Johnson, 2017)
Big, bold and beautiful. It’s hard to describe Rian Johnson’s achievements here any other way. This is the kind of Star Wars film that lives up to the grandeur of the title: high stakes galore, with whopping […]
Don’t Breathe (Alvarez, 2016)
A most dangerous game of “blind man’s buff” plays out in Don’t Breathe, with a group of thieves trying to avoid the wrath of a blind army veteran after breaking into his home. It’s an interesting […]
Rodents of Unusual Size (Costello, Metzler & Springer, 2017)
Though it’s only just slightly over an hour, Rodents of Unusual Size covers a lot of ground when it comes to the nutria, a large, rat-like invasive species terrorizing the wetlands of Louisiana. From its history as […]
The Wolf House (Cociña & León, 2018)
I don’t know all that much about the Chilean cult that haunts The Wolf House. A cursory search reveals far more than I want to know, with atrocity after atrocity being unveiled like stepping stones. It’s […]
Mandy (Cosmatos, 2018)
Let’s start off with the good. Panos Cosmatos knows exactly the kind of aesthetic he wants to project, which is a psychedelic, deep-toned phantasmagoria. It’s perfect for stoners and those who like their films vividly […]
The Haunting of Hill House (Flanagan, 2018)
This is certainly not your mother’s Hill House. Mike Flanagan has taken Shirley Jackson’s novel and re-imagined it as a family saga—something I was apprehensive about, because family sagas are so common nowadays. I’m rather partial to Jackson’s […]
The Breadwinner (Twomey, 2017)
The thing I most admire about The Breadwinner is the fact that it doesn’t end on a tidy note. I found that commendable. It shows a lot of maturity to avoid the customary scene of hugs and […]
Icarus (Fogel, 2017)
I am tickled that everyone on here had the same thought as I had when I started watching this: Super Size Me: Doping Edition. I was even confused as to whether this film was the right […]
