Tribeca Review: “Missing From Fire Trail Road”

At the end of 2020, Mary Ellen Johnson-Davis, a resident of the Tulalip Indian reservation outside Seattle, vanished in plain sight. Her husband, a white man with whom she had reportedly been experiencing some marital issues, reported her disappearance to the authorities and then washed his hands of the matter. Officially, the investigation is at […]

Tribeca Review: “Linda Perry: Let It Die Here”

Most people likely know Linda Perry as the lead singer and songwriter of 4 Non Blondes, the San Francisco-based rock band who had a smash hit single with the song “What’s Up?” from 1992’s “Bigger, Better, Faster, More!”— their first and only album. But Perry’s career has been anything but a one-hit wonder. After 4 […]

Review: “Flipside”

Chris Wilcha begins his documentary Flipside at an art gallery, where photographer Herman Leonard is exhibiting some of his work. Leonard is most well-known for his stunning photographs of some of the greatest jazz musicians who ever lived, and gives the viewer a mini tour of images of Nat King Cole, Duke Ellington, and others. […]

Review: “Backspot”

Sports movie tropes abound in D.W. Waterson’s feature directorial debut Backspot, but it’s in how those tropes are employed that the film creates and sustains interest. Perhaps its most notable trait is that it centers around a sport that for a long time largely hasn’t been considered as such, both on and off screen. Cheerleading […]

Review: “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”

“Do you have what it takes to make it epic?” Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) asks this question of Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) toward the end of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. But it might just as well be a challenge offered to director George Miller. To say that Miller’s 2015 action movie Mad Max: Fury Road came […]

Review: “Evil Does Not Exist”

Patience is not merely a virtue when it comes to viewing Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s work; it’s a demand, a requirement he places upon the audience when they enter in to one of his worlds, whether it’s the tentatively building intrigue of his Vertigo riff, Asako I & II, the drawn out car rides and conversations that […]

Review: “I Saw the TV Glow”

When I was around preschool age, the TV show Might Morphin Power Rangers— which ran from 1993 to 1996— was huge in the circle of other kids I knew. My mom wouldn’t let me watch it, believing it was too scary. I was allowed, however, to watch Batman: The Animated Series, and that specific iteration […]

Review: “The Fall Guy”

It started at the Oscars. When Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt teamed up to present a salute to the stunt community at this year’s Academy Awards (an odd bit of promotion considering that no Oscar for stunt work currently exists and there’s no evidence of it coming on the horizon), their playful ribbing of each […]

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 […]