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How should movies reflect our morals and values as a society? Or, more pointedly, what function does entertainment serve? This question seems to lie at the heart of the controversy surrounding Colleen Hoover’s enormously popular novel It Ends With Us and its new film adaptation.
Read MoreHit Man is Richard Linklater’s latest movie about the double life of a college professor who wants to live the philosophy he teaches. The story follows Gary (Glen Powell), who moonlights with an undercover law enforcement team that extracts confessions from homicide solicitors. He doesn’t pose as a hitman, though. He’s one of the techs in the van that does whatever a tech-in-a-van does.
Read MoreTrap echoes much of M. Night Shyamalan’s filmography—his interest in fatherhood especially—but eschews his traditional “big twist” in favor of a series of escalating, but surprisingly grounded, reveals.
Read MoreWatching a Deadpool movie used to feel like catching something during the late-night hours of the Comedy Central lineup—now, that’s been swapped out for a Disney+ version, with the same concept but not quite the same execution.
Read MoreRomeo Must Die, starring Aaliyah and Jet Li, is a hilariously specific time capsule of early-aughts action style.
Read MoreGreg Kwedar’s Sing Sing quietly insists on vulnerability and empathy as far more valuable healing tools than jailing and confining.
Read MoreMore than likely you will not walk away with all the answers to Lynch’s films from Lynch/Oz, but there is still something special about asking yourself questions.
Read MoreDial M for Murder is chock-full of the suspense, schemes and shots that make a classic Hitchcock, alongside some choices that perhaps the man himself does not recognize as being bizarrely unique.
Read MoreElizabeth Sankey weaves an intricate tale of female persecution and its relation to postpartum depression, soaked with the tears of her own harrowing experience in a psychiatric hospital after her own breakdown. The documentary works as an expose of her institutionalization intercut with iconic witches throughout film and television history and the confessions of other suffering mothers.
Read MoreFly Me to the Moon knows how to use Channing Tatum’s grace and physical control as a key building block in the construction of NASA Flight Director Cole Davis.
Read MoreThe circumstances of Annie Baker’s debut film, Janet Planet, are specific: the film centers on Lacy, an 11 year old girl, and her mother Janet, as they while away the summer of 1991 in the woods of Massachusetts.
Read MoreTaking advantage of this period of artistic semi-freedom, director Karen Shakhnazarov made Zerograd in 1988, a Kafkaesque satire of life under authoritarian rule that draws attention to the surreal nature of a government actively attempting to resuscitate what was already on its way out.
Read MoreA movie is a catharsis, a chance for Jeremy O. Harris to say, “This is what you were supposed to learn. Hear it from me. I am the authority on my work.”
Read MoreTi West and Mia Goth’s MaXXXine takes us to a lovely replication of ‘80s Los Angeles, but there’s not much substance behind the sets and star power.
Read MoreA Quiet Place: Day One poses the question: What if you eschewed a family-driven survival story in favor of a plot with stakes no higher than that of a video game side quest?
Read MoreEmbracing global cinema has the ability to cross cultural and cinematic barriers: how the filmmaker uses action and visual storytelling as a universal language, how the filmmaker connects their personal story to broader themes, and how the filmmaker embraces the absurdity of the world around us. In Tsui Hark’s Wicked City (1992), we have one of global cinema’s finest and oddest examples.
Read MoreLanthimos loves a fall from grace and loves to see characters smart enough to make the right moves but dumb enough to think that the good days will last forever.
Read MoreJacques Tati’s Playtime (1967) remains a masterpiece of visual comedy reminding viewers of our own contemporary constructions that threaten to engulf us.
Read MoreIn director Chris Smith’s blitzy kitsch-soaked documentary, DEVO, Mothersbaugh and Casale give an oral history of the experimental music project’s suburban origins, their wacky audio-visual antics on the punk circuit, and their brief, but explosive time as one of the most famous bands in the world.
Read MoreHit Man, the latest from Austin’s own director Richard Linklater and actor Glen Powell, looks like the opposite of film noir, particularly as described by Schrader, at first. It’is a funny, sexy, sunny character study, in which Powell and co-star Adria Arjona build a thorny romance that turns on curiosity as much as it does attraction. Powell’s mild-mannered philosophy professor Gary Johnson, who’s moonlightsing as an imposter hitman for the New Orleans Police Department, provides a chance for him to go both broad and deep. It’s consistently a hoot.
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