The Call Me by Your Name director’s update of Dario Argento’s seminal occult thriller opens Friday, Nov. 2.
Ryan Vu
Posted inFilm & Television
A Back-to-Basics Halloween Fails to Restore the Horror and Mystery of the Original Slasher
Haddonfield, 2018: It’s been thirty years since Michael Myers last stalked Laurie Strode, and no one can move on.
Posted inFilm & Television
Competitive-Jigsaw-Puzzling Picture Puzzle Is Missing a Few Pieces
PUZZLE Opening Friday, Aug. 24 Adapted from the Argentine film Rompecabezas, this quiet indie drama from producer/director Marc Turtletaub centers on Agnes (Kelly Macdonald), an unworldly and underappreciated housewife who is inspired to assert her own identity after discovering a latent talent for competitive jigsaw puzzling. Best known as the producer of Little Miss Sunshine, […]
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In First Reformed, a Giant of American Cinema Masterfully Connects Secular and Spiritual Despair with Glimmers of Humor and Hope
FIRST REFORMED Opening Friday, June 8 Already being hailed as a major statement from a giant of American cinema, Paul Schrader’s latest film is no quiet reflection on a finished career. First Reformed is as risk-taking as his best work from the seventies and eighties (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, American Gigolo), confronting our strange, terrifying […]
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Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs Is an Alternately Respectful and Baffling Parable About Japan
ISLE OF DOGS Opening Friday, April 6 By now, you know what to expect from a Wes Anderson movie. Even the talking animals and intricate multi-modal animation in Isle of Dogs aren’t novel after Fantastic Mr. Fox. So the controversy surrounding it might seem a bit surprising. Sure, Anderson’s just-so fantasy Japan might be cultural […]
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Flower Wants to Be an Edgy Sexploitation Flick and a Quirky Romantic Comedy at Once. Guess How Well That Works.
FLOWER Opening Friday, March 30 Eastbound & Down scribe and YA novelist Alex McAulay’s original screenplay for Flower became something of a cult object before it was even produced. American indie coming-of-age dramas don’t tend to center on gangs of teenage girls who seduce older men with blowjobs in order to blackmail them with the […]
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You’re Unlikely to Fondly Remember Nostalgia, a Maudlin and Confused Anthology Film
NOSTALGIA Opening Friday, March 2 Yes, this anthology film by director Mark Pellington (Arlington Road) and writer Alex Ross Perry (Listen Up Philip) is about nostalgia, but of a very particular kind: our sentimental attachment to objects. It’s an unconventional subject for a star-studded melodrama, but Pellington and Perry never quite manage to make it […]
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Festival Smash Call Me by Your Name Is Accessible, Intelligent, Subtle, and Nearly Perfect
CALL ME BY YOUR NAME Opening Friday, Jan. 19 Since its premiere at Sundance last summer, Luca Guadagnino’s latest film has received nearly unanimous praise, which is often a sign of bland likability. But Call Me by Your Name is the rare festival smash that is broadly accessible without sacrificing one whit of intelligence, subtlety, […]
Posted inCulture
Movie Review: Luc Besson Breaks the Bank for the Visually Extravagant, Emotionally Empty Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets★★½ Now playingValerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, the latest sci-fi extravaganza from famed French director Luc Besson, aims to be the cinematic equivalent of a perfect dessert soufflé: rich and sugary-sweet yet light as air. With a budget of about $180 million, it’s said to […]
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Fans of Ben Wheatley’s Idiosyncratic Films May Be Disappointed by the Nineties-Tarantino Pastiche of Free Fire
FREE FIRE ½ Opening Friday, April 21 With a top-shelf cast, Martin Scorsese as a producer, and U.S. distribution from A24 (Moonlight, The Room), Free Fire is UK director Ben Wheatley’s most high-profile film yet. Like his idiosyncratic earlier work, it was made in collaboration with screenwriter and editor Amy Jump, his wife. But fans […]