Holiday Classics: “The Thin Man” (1934)

I’ve watched The Thin Man countless times. But I’ll confess, if you put a gun to my head, I couldn’t tell you who the killer is revealed to be at the end of this sophisticated whodunit. That isn’t so much a failing of the storytelling as it is an indication that the mystery runs secondary […]

Review: “WTO/99”

Astonishing, incendiary, and eerily prescient, Ian Bell’s documentary WTO/99 may depict one single event in American history, but does so in manner that reveals the ripple effects that globalization and anti-environmental, anti-labor practices— far from mainstream, hot button issues at the brink of the new millennium— have had on our current climate, economic, and human […]

Holiday Classics: “Never Say Goodbye” (1946)

Errol Flynn is a star known primarily for swashbuckling adventures, westerns, and war movies that showcased his machismo physicality and roguish charm— films like Captain Blood (1935), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). As pitch perfect as he is in those films, it’s a delight to watch […]

Review: “Hamnet”

Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet opens with a quote from a 2004 article by Stephen Greenblatt titled “The Death of Hamnet and the Making of Hamlet”: “Hamnet and Hamlet are in fact the same name, entirely interchangeable in Stratford records in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.” It’s a plain, matter-of-fact statement, not the sort of […]

Review: “Wicked: For Good”

When I reviewed Jon M. Chu’s big-screen adaptation of the first half of the hit Broadway musical Wicked around this same time last year, I was surprised to find that it had some merit— in its performances, and its translation, and its broadening of the source material— given my distaste for both the show and […]

Review: “Die My Love”

Die My Love opens on an unexpected scene of stillness: a static camera trained on the interior of a rural Montana home, quietly observing the two people maneuvering around inside it: Grace (Jennifer Lawrence) and her partner Jackson (Robert Pattinson), who inherited the dilapidated house from his uncle, who committed suicide there. Perhaps that doesn’t […]

Review: “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk”

Sepideh Farsi couldn’t enter Gaza. From Cairo, where she traveled in the hopes of crossing the Egypt/Palestine border to document the ongoing war in Gaza, an Israeli-imposed blockade obstructed all paths. But while speaking to Palestinian refugees in Cairo, Farsi met a man who suggested that she speak to Fatma (Fatem to those close to […]

Review: “Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake)”

An anthology movie that drifts by with the laziness of a summer day on the lake where it is set, writer and director Sierra Falconer’s debut feature never builds to a profound crescendo, but it’s accomplished in style and substance all the same. A loosely autobiographical series of stories set around the Michigan lake near […]

Review: “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere”

That the Boss is apparently one of history’s great note-takers isn’t something I was expecting from a film about Bruce Springsteen. The overly expository dialogue and too-literal written memos that spell out everything that the iconic singer/songwriter is thinking and feeling are just another well-worn device of the music biopic, but it feels especially egregious […]

Review: “The Mastermind”

He looks at the art, but he isn’t really looking at it. As he slowly slopes around the museum galleries, one of his young sons chattering animatedly in the otherwise silent place as the guard snoozes in his chair nearby, it’s clear from his furtive glances that he’s searching for something. Eventually, he sets his […]