Review: “Challengers”

“Tennis is a relationship.” Tennis prodigy Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) utters these words as she’s stretched out by the beach, late into the evening following a party at the junior’s segment of the U.S. Open. She’s addressing Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) and Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), a pair of old school friends competing as a doubles […]

Review: “The People’s Joker”

If I regret one thing about my experience covering the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, it’s returning my ticket for the Midnight Madness world premiere of Vera Drew’s The People’s Joker. My reasons for doing so have nothing to do with the film itself; as a lifelong Batman fan and a bonafide hater of Todd […]

Review: “Civil War”

I can’t help but admire Alex Garland for the feature of his fourth film, Civil War, that bugs me the most. Set in a near but indeterminate future, the British writer and director turns his gaze on America, examining a horrific yet (post-January 6, 2021) not implausible consequence of partisan politics driving civilians to the […]

Review: “Monkey Man”

That Dev Patel’s Monkey Man— not only the actor’s directorial debut, but his brainchild, having also conceived the story, co-written the screenplay, and produced it in addition to starring in it— would be compared to the John Wick series was inevitable, even if all they share in common is their centering on a lone man […]

Review: “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire”

Any new Godzilla movie always has my expectations working somewhat against it. My younger brother watched and rewatched Roland Emmerich’s 1998 Godzilla so many times after it was released— almost daily— I’m surprised he didn’t ruin the VHS tape. But he also went back and watched several of Toho Co.’s original films (albeit the horribly […]

Review: “Road House” (2024)

If there’s one thing Rowdy Herrington’s 1989 sleaze-fest Road House understood, it was how best to utilize Patrick Swayze’s appeal as an object of desire. The morning after Swayze’s cool bouncer James Dalton blows into town, having taken a job at a rough-and-tumble bar called the Double Deuce in Jasper, Missouri (a tiny town that […]

Review: “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire”

The self-seriousness of the nostalgia-bait Ghostbusters sequel to open with Robert Frost’s poem Fire and Ice is almost laughable. And yet, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire— the fifth Ghostbusters movie and a direct sequel to 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife— plays its ridiculous premise fairly straight. That fan service would abound in a movie that throws new characters alongside […]

Review: “Riddle of Fire”

“It’s like a modern-day Goonies” has turned into a catch-all phrase covering any sort of adventure story centered on children, particularly ones that are steeped in nostalgia (perhaps the most recognizable example is the Netflix series Stranger Things, which begins in the early 1980s a mere couple of years before Richard Donner’s The Goonies was […]

Review: “Love Lies Bleeding”

As soon as reclusive Lou (Kristen Stewart) glimpses statuesque body builder Jackie (Katy O’Brien) from across the gym she manages, we know she’s sunk. The way director Rose Glass allows the camera to absorb this expression of desire, and the sensuous way she lingers on the body, tracing every line of Jackie’s muscular frame, are […]

True/False 2024 Dispatch: “Daughters,” “Ibelin,” “Agent of Happiness”

For my final dispatch from this year’s True/False Film Festival, I’m highlight three movies that had their world premieres at Sundance at the start of the year. They are also all, coincidentally, highly emotional works, accomplishing everything from memorializing a life to examining what makes people happy to highlighting the need for systemic change in […]