Venice 2025: “Frankenstein” (2025)

Rarely does anyone, when discussing Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, refer to it by its unabbreviated title: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. In Greek mythology, Prometheus is a Titan sent to Earth early in its creation to help humanity. But he gives them fire, a tool that begets knowledge, more civilized technology— and destruction. His defiance […]

Venice 2025: “Mother,” “Hijira,” “Milk Teeth”

The Venice Film Festival may be a beacon for its buzzy premieres and starry red carpets, but there are plenty of other intriguing projects making their world premieres here that could easily be overlooked. The three films I’m highlighting in this dispatch involve crisis of family and faith: Mother and Milk Teeth, which both premiered […]

Venice 2025: “Calle Malaga”

There’s a stigma around growing old, isn’t there? A perception that the elderly lack purpose in the absence of a job, lack their full cognitive abilities, lack physicality, lack sensuality. It’s such ageist notions that writer/director Maryam Touzani’s Calle Malaga— both a warm hug and a sorrowful reflection on the passing of time— seeks to […]

Venice 2025: “The Kidnapping of Arabella”

The Kidnapping of Arabella isn’t about a kidnapping— at least, not in the usual sense. For one, the parties involved have their roles reversed. Arabella (Lucrezia Guglielmino, a great find with her crooked smile and discerning squint), the little girl who’s supposedly captured, not only willingly goes with her captor— she begs her to take […]

Venice 2025: “Bugonia”

A banal chamber-piece whose broad critiques of corporate greed, tech-based paranoia, ecological disaster, and humanity’s overall uselessness as a species feel tired and dated on arrival, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia sits in some gray middle zone of his filmography, merging the uncomfortable humor, off-kilter realities, and distressing violence of his early films (Dogtooth, The Lobster) with […]

Review: “Highest 2 Lowest”

It begins with a sweeping shots of the New York City skyline, just as that magic hour when the sun begins to peak over the horizon hits. The light dazzlingly reflects off the buildings, the water and windows of icons tall and small appearing gloriously warm as the strains of “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” […]

Review: “Sorry, Baby”

A few weeks ago, while rummaging around a cabinet in my office in search of a notepad with some blank pages that I could bring with me to the theater, I stumbled across a morbid little artifact: a thick notebook with gilt-edged pages and a soft, textured pink cover held in place by a metal […]

Review: “Catching Bullets”

In 2019, St. Louis, Missouri experienced the highest per capital murder rate of any city in the United States, a sobering statistic whose resolution was made all the more pressing by the fact that 13 of those deaths recorded over that summer were children. Within the first three hours of 2020, the city had already […]

Review: “Together”

Almost everything about Together— the debut feature from writer and director Michael Shanks— is precise. The formal rigor of its lore-heavy script. The perfectly matched leads in Dave Franco and Allison Brie, long-term partners in real life playing long-term partners on screen. The exquisitely-rendered visual effects, which are just squirm-inducing enough to make the audience […]

Review: “Dead Lover”

Dead Lover isn’t shy about its status as a Frankenstein riff. In fact, it opens with a quote from Mary Shelley’s novel: “There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand.” In the story, this line is delivered by the doctor Victor Frankenstein, as he ponders what force may be compelling […]