Review: “Once Upon a Time in Uganda”

A camera sweeps over the imposing Kazakhstan landscape, tracing the path of a lone figure walking amid the rock formations, a falcon flying overhead. The music swells as the camera pushes in close on this man, grandly philosophizing through his solemn voiceover narration. It’s an opening scene fit for an epic action movie, but Once […]

Review: “L’immensità”

In Emanuele Crialese’s L’immensità, Andrew (Luana Giuliani) is a 12-year-old boy wresting with his gender identity. Born Adriana, his parents Felice (frequent Crialese collaborator Vincenzo Amato) and Clara (Penélope Cruz) still call him by that name, and address him as “young lady.” They aren’t exactly hostile, and yet, their inability to understand or, in the […]

Review: “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”

Indiana Jones has always been about the past. He is an archaeologist, after all, and his exploits, from the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark to the titular artifact of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, have always married the past with his present day, typically with a supernatural twist. But the […]

Review: “Asteroid City”

Asteroid City, population 87. You can stand in the middle of the highway that runs through it, turn 360 degrees, and absorb the town in its entirety. There’s the cozy roadside diner and neighboring auto shop. The motor court, with its orderly rows of neatly-appointed white cabins (except for Cabin #7, temporarily replaced by a […]

Review: “Elemental”

Elemental is that classic tale of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy makes grand heroic gesture to win girl back. I’d say that with their 27th feature film, Pixar Animation Studios put their own spin on the old romance trope, but they sort of don’t—except that the boy, in this case, is a being […]

Tribeca Review: “Let the Canary Sing”

“She deserves better” was the first thought that crossed my mind as the credits rolled on Let the Canary Sing, Alison Ellwood’s documentary on the life and career of the pop star Cyndi Lauper. Lauper, who became an instant icon of 80s youth with the release of her album She’s So Unusual (which featured songs […]

Tribeca Review: “The Future”

In writer and director Noam Kaplan’s The Future, the world—or at least, the city of Jerusalem—is recognizable, yet rendered ever so slightly, ever so unsettlingly, off-kilter. Israel is on the cusp of launching a manned mission to the moon. Upbeat commercials advertise new tech of the bleakest sort: a program that uses an algorithm to […]

Tribeca Review: “Breaking the News”

In early 2017, Donald Trump was sworn in as President, and the Women’s March on Washington served as a scream for many of America’s frustrated and scared inhabitants. Amidst the fear and uncertainty, journalist Emily Ramshaw saw a possibility. She left her steady job with the Texas Tribune along with colleague Amanda Zamora and started […]

Review: “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”

There are your run-of-the-mill superhero movies that dominate theaters these days, and then there’s Spider-Verse. Sony Pictures Animation’s 2018 feature Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which thrust Miles Morales (an Afro-Latino Brooklyn teen who takes up the mantle of Spider-Man and a less-than-familiar face outside of comic books) into the center of the narrative. It’s a […]

Review: “The Little Mermaid” (2023)

It all started around 2010. In the aftermath of the studio’s return to animated princess stories with The Princess and the Frog and on the heels of the release of their next one, Tangled, then-Walt Disney Animation Studios chief creative officer John Lasseter stated that the storied animation house—the bulk of whose legacy rests on […]