Review: “Sally”

Many things can be attributed to Sally Ride. She was the first American woman in space. She was also the youngest at the time of her initial flight in 1983. Before that, she served as the ground-based CapCom for the second and third space shuttle flights, and helped develop the shuttle’s robotic arm; after that, […]

Review: “Materialists”

It’s a scene straight out of every frothy romantic comedy you’ve seen before: attractive and successful New York City matchmaker Lucy (Dakota Johnson) glides into a party thrown for her by her work colleagues. It’s a swanky get-together, replete with balloons and cake and bubbly, celebrating the impending ninth marriage of a couple Lucy introduced. […]

Tribeca 2025: “Cuerpo Celeste”

Summer is a dream rendered in warm and hazy tones by writer and director Narya Ilic Garcia in her sophomore feature Cuerpo Celeste. It’s Chile circa 1990, and Celeste (Helen Mrugalski) is 15 years old. In a collage of scenes that deftly convey the slippery nature of that lazy, in-between time, Celeste spends the holidays […]

Review: “The Phoenician Scheme”

Zsa-Zsa Korda ought to be dead. He’s lying face-down in a cornfield, his limbs splayed at odd angles, some feet away from where the wreckage of the plane he was flying in before it began to crumple in mid-air smolders. The remnants of his belongings are similarly scattered about, licked by flames. They’re odd items, […]

Tribeca 2025: “Runa Simi”

The image on the screen is familiar: two lions, one big, one small, sitting side-by-side on a hill, gazing out over the land below them. The language, however, is different. When we first meet Fernando Valencia, an Indigenous voice artist from the Peruvian Andes, he’s working on dubbing a scene from the classic 1994 Disney […]

Review: “Lilo & Stitch” (2025)

I remember going to see Lilo & Stitch when it was first released in theaters— quite vividly, in fact. I was 11 years old, it was summer break, June 2002, just outside of Atlanta, Georgia, and likely hot as hades. My mom, my brother, and I joined up with one of my friends, her younger […]

Review: “The Encampments”

On April 17, 2024, a group of pro-Palestine students began an encampment on New York City’s Columbia University campus, standing in solidarity with Gaza in the broader context of the Gaza war that began on October 7, 2023, and demanding that the university divest from Israel. The immediate and global impact of the movement happened […]

Review: “The Pee Pee Poo Poo Man”

Situated somewhere in the neighborhood of a ripped-from-the-headlines true crime tale, absurdist comedy, tech age paranoid thriller, and slice-of-life indie, you’ll find The Pee Pee Poo Poo Man. Writer and director Braden Sitter culled the inspiration for his bizarre feature film from a viral news event that occurred in Toronto in 2019, when a man […]

Review: “Thunderbolts*”

There’s a string of scenes in the final stretch of Thunderbolts*— the final installment of Phase 5 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, for those still keeping track— that’s as stirring and soulful as anything across the franchise’s 36 (and counting) film history. But like it’s title, the movie comes with an asterisk: any story element […]

Review: “The Shrouds”

I thought I was done writing. Then I saw David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds. Grief fucks people up. In all the expected ways, sure: the depressive episodes prompted by the gaping void the loss of someone— or something— beloved create a ripple effect that spreads about their circle of friends and family like a disease, the […]