CRAZY RICH ASIANS Opening Friday, August 17 The big-budget romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians is an interesting specimen. As the first major studio film in twenty-five years to feature an all-Asian cast, it’s an important milestone in terms of cultural representation. The film manages to be a significant cinematic event, and maybe even an Important […]
Glenn McDonald
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In Ant-Man and the Wasp, the Marvel Cinematic Universe Takes a Goofy, Low-Stakes Break from Existential Threats
ANT-MAN AND THE WASP Opening Friday, July 6
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Movie Review: At Least We Get Bening, Moss, and Ronan Mucking Around in Chekhovian Mischief in an Otherwise Standard The Seagull
The Seagull★★★ Now playingYou love her But she loves him And he loves somebody else You just can’t win —The J. Geils Band, “Love Stinks” It’s summertime on a nineteenth-century Russian country estate, and love triangles are colliding in a tangle of messy geometry. The aging stage actress Irina is visiting her lover Trigorin, a […]
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The Arty Horror of Hereditary Thrives on Real Anxieties, Hideous Images, and the Occasional Headless Cultist
HEREDITARY Opening Friday, June 8
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If Rogue One Was a War Picture Set in the Star Wars Universe, then Solo Is a Space Western—a Pretty Good One, Too
Opening Friday, May 25 As corporate custodians of George Lucas’s space-opera vision, Disney executives have actually done an admirable job with the new batch of Star Wars movies. They’ve commissioned clever scripts, hired smart people, and developed some good films. Movie math is always tricky, but surely everyone can agree with the certainty that The […]
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If the First Deadpool Was a Halfhearted R-Rated Spider-Man, the Superior Sequel Is a Controlled Comic Detonation of the Superhero-Movie Template
DEADPOOL 2 Opening Friday, May 18 A sequel to the surprise 2016 blockbuster, Deadpool 2 is one of those rare follow-ups that improves upon the original, expanding its ideas instead of repeating them. If the first movie was a halfhearted R-rated Spider-Man (it was), then the new one is a controlled detonation of the superhero-movie […]
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Forget Those Avengers. RBG, the New Doc on Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Is the Best Superhero Movie of the Year.
RBG Opening Friday, May 11 RBG, the new documentary chronicling the life of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is way more fun than it might sound. Surprisingly bouncy and engaging, it charts Ginsburg’s gradual ascension from pioneering legal scholar to eighty-five-year-old pop-culture icon. RBG is one of those rare docs that built enough momentum […]
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Cannes Jury Prize Winner Loveless Leaves a Knot in the Stomach and a Chill in the Blood
LOVELESS Opening Friday, March 30 Loveless, a Russian drama that won the Jury Prize at Cannes last year, is a hard, bleak film that leaves a knot in the stomach and a chill in the blood. It’s late in the autumn of 2012, and Muscovites Boris and Zhenya are riding out a brutal divorce. Twelve-year-old […]
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In Japanese Film Oh Lucy!, Dark Comedy and Weird Tragedy Complexly Blend Together
OH LUCY! Opening Friday, March 23 Most movies operate by generating primal feelings: fear, joy, anxiety, amusement. Elicit these in various proportions and your movie will fit into a broad genre, whether it’s horror, comedy, or drama. That’s the usual routine. But some films look past primal feelings to focus on more complicated emotions. They […]
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Movie Review: Lara Croft Jumps Back Into Action in Tomb Raider’s Reboot
Tomb Raider ★★★ ½ Opening Friday, March 16 In 2013, the venerable Tomb Raider video game franchise unveiled its tenth installment in the series, a complete reboot/origin story with a new emphasis on gritty realism and emotional stakes. The new game was clearly designed to retire the persona of the old Lara Croft—a stone-cold fox […]
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