Power Ballad
Rating 8/10 Irish writer-director John Carney has built a remarkable career by celebrating how artists find connection through a melody. From the Oscar-winning Once to Begin Again, Sing Street, and Flora and Son, Carney has always found fresh ways to tell stories about people whose lives are transformed by music. His latest continues that streak. […]
Masters of the Universe
Rating 6/10 Masters of the Universe has ornate costumes, synth-rock, and plenty of camp. That is both its charm and its problem. He-Man lives somewhere in the middle of a heroic fantasy and a Mattel toy. Director Travis Knight embraces that with real affection. However, there is a difference between welcoming absurdity and drowning in […]
Pressure
Rating 6/10 The Allied invasion of Normandy is one of the most famous military operations ever undertaken. June 6, 1944, is a date etched into history. The Allies land on the beaches. The war’s turning point arrives. The challenge for this narrative is persuading us that any of it was ever in doubt. That is […]
Backrooms
Rating 8/10 Long before it became a movie, Backrooms originated from the internet’s preoccupation with “liminal spaces.” Users began sharing photographs of normally crowded areas, like malls, school hallways, and office buildings, that became strangely anxiety-inducing when deserted. These pictures weren’t traditionally frightening, but they evoked a peculiar mix of loneliness and unease. The liminal […]
I Love Boosters
Rating 7/10 There is something comical about an anti-capitalist critique being sold as entertainment that demands you purchase a ticket within the very system it wants to indict. But that contradiction is also part of the surreality. Director Boots Riley has given us a work too gleefully ridiculous to be received as a solemn manifesto. […]
Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu
Rating 5/10 I’m old school. When I see The Mandalorian and Grogu, my brain translates that as “Boba Fett and Baby Yoda.” Not the same, but adjacent to those characters. For the uninitiated, Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal), aka the Mandalorian, comes from the same armored bounty-hunter tradition that made Boba Fett one of the coolest-looking […]
Obsession
Rating 7/10 Obsession is a remarkably self-assured little horror picture, made on a shoestring, but it never looks cheap. Yet one nagging element kept me from fully accepting the premise: its lead protagonist does not behave like a normal person. That may sound like a small complaint in a movie involving supernatural forces. But, it […]
Remarkably Bright Creatures
Rating 6/10 Remarkably Bright Creatures bears the unmistakable hallmarks of a very specific kind of Netflix movie. Before I ever pressed play, it looked like an inspirational tearjerker blessed with the comforting presence of Sally Field, doing her best to elevate the kind of accessible story that Netflix specializes in. And honestly? My impression was […]
In the Grey
Rating 5/10 Director Guy Ritchie has comfortably settled into the current phase of his career. His pictures have become reliable entertainment destined for streaming. Recent flicks like Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, The Covenant, and The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare didn’t reinvent the action genre, but they delivered solid thrills through sheer mechanical efficiency. You […]
The Sheep Detectives
Rating 6/10 After spending two decades playing Wolverine, Hugh Jackman now finds himself surrounded by sheep, making this picture the closest the actor has ever come to starring in The Woolverine. In the rural English village of Denbrook, reclusive shepherd George Hardy (Hugh Jackman) spends his days reading murder mysteries to his baa brigade. They […]