Air
As light as its title, Air is an easygoing yet absorbing docudrama about how Nike coaxed a hot young basketball player named Michael Jordan over to their advertising roster and created the billion-selling Air Jordan sneaker in the process. The story opens in 1984, and if director/costar Affleck is heavy-handed with his opening montage of that year's events and his… read more!
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
The kind of movie that Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is can be summed up by its unwieldy title: epic yet kooky, family-centric yet overstuffed, as if Robert Rodriguez had been given $200 million to make one of his Spy Kids sequels. It is by no means a detestable film. But it very much feels like a "programmer": just another… read more!
Beau Is Afraid
Three features in, I'm not yet convinced that writer/director Ari Aster is a genius. I found Hereditary too overwrought and Midsommar too slowly-paced, though both had their share of disturbing images. Beau Is Afraid – its working title was the catchier if less literal Disappointment Blvd. – is Aster's most assured and imaginative work as a director. As a writer,… read more!
Cocaine Bear
With an absurdly literal, Snakes on a Plane-ish title like Cocaine Bear, you know you're in for a movie that doesn't take itself too seriously. But there's a fine line between self-aware silliness and smug irony, especially these days: I am reminded of a night, some years ago, when I went to a karaoke bar and some hipster girl decided… read more!
Enys Men
Enys Men is packed with ambiguity. Sparse and spooky, it's been marketed as a "folk horror" movie, but while it touches on a few classic tropes – a splash of blood, some ghost-like entities, a sudden loud noise or two, a little body horror, a bit of the old "is this real or is the protagonist going insane?" stuff –… read more!
Inside
Willem Dafoe plays an art thief who, while breaking into a wealthy architect's New York penthouse in order to steal three priceless Egon Schiele paintings, finds himself locked in when the security system malfunctions. He then must use his wits and the tools at hand to engineer an escape. We soon realize that this is not something he'll be able… read more!
Showing Up
In her fourth feature with writer/director Kelly Reichardt, Michelle Williams plays Lizzy, a Portland, Oregon sculptor trying to finish her new work in time for her upcoming gallery show. In the meantime she is antagonized by her flaky landlord and fellow artist Jo (Hong Chau), her divorced parents (Maryann Plunkett and Judd Hirsch), her mentally ill brother (John Magaro), and… read more!
Sick of Myself
Signe (Kristine Kujath Thorp) is a plain jane Oslo barista who finds herself growing increasingly envious of the attention that her arrogant artist boyfriend Thomas (Eirik Sæther) is receiving, and although one of her first lines in Sick of Myself is "I'm not a narcissist", we know that's a lie, as moments later she begins her campaign to get more… read more!
Sisu
Take a John Wick movie, place it in the Northern Finnish tundra in the year 1944, and you've got Sisu. The title is an untranslatable Finnish word meaning grit, bravery, determination, and so forth – and that's what Sisu offers, primarily in the form of bloody violence. During the final year of World War II, the tide has turned against… read more!