Review: “F1”

The racing sequences in F1 are slick and propulsive. That’s evident from the jump, when former F1 star and current fallen-from-grace-racer-for-hire Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) hops into his car at the 24 Hours of Daytona. The quick cuts and the cinematography (with several cameras positioned inside each car granting a first-hand perspective of the race), […]

Review: “28 Years Later”

Hope. That’s the element of Danny Boyle’s 2002 apocalyptic horror film 28 Days Later that surprised me the most. Of course, a lot of my reaction can likely be credited to the fact that, despite its generally enthusiastic reception, it passed me by until I finally sought it out a couple months ago, and 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. […]

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, […]

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 […]

Review: “Sinners”

Clarksdale, Mississippi, 1932. The signs that this is the Jim Crow-era South perpetually exist on the periphery of the lives of the town’s Black residents: in the fields flecked with white cotton as far as the eye can see, where Black sharecroppers labor day in and day out, and in Hogwood (David Maldonado), the white […]