Review: “I Know Catherine, the Log Lady”

You don’t have Twin Peaks without David Lynch. You don’t have Twin Peaks without Mark Frost. You don’t have Twin Peaks without Kyle MacLachlan’s Dale Cooper. And you certainly don’t have Twin Peaks without the Log Lady. The enigmatic resident of the small Pacific Northwest town of the iconic series’ title, played by Catherine Coulson, […]

Review: “Eephus”

I am not a baseball fan. This has plagued me for most of my life. Having lived in St. Louis— widely regarded as one of the nation’s most fanatical sports towns— for over half of my life now, I’m used to shrugging off the question I receive most from people when I’m out of town […]

Review: “Snow White” (2025)

I’ve done this song and dance before. I could be lazy and simply refer you to my review of Disney’s 2023 live-action update of their 1989 animated classic The Little Mermaid in lieu of writing an entirely new piece on the studio’s remake of their original princess picture, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, as […]

Review: “Black Bag”

It wasn’t until a little over three years ago that I saw Out of Sight for the first time, at a rep screening at a local cinema running a Steven Soderbergh series. I remember walking out of the theater into the chilly night air, dazzled by what I’d just seen. Soderbergh’s 1998 crime flick may […]

Review: “Mickey 17”

In Martin Ritt’s 1979 film Norma Rae, Sally Field’s titular character is spurred to unionize the cotton mill where she works after hearing a speech by Reuben Warshowsky (Ron Leibman), a union organizer from New York City who states that, “your average working man is not stupid. He just gets tired.” In Bong Joon-ho’s earnest […]

Review: “Rats!”

Rats! is very much a your-milage-will-vary sort of movie. Writers, directors, and producers Maxwell Nalevansky and Carl Fry’s debut feature film’s blend of satire, gross-out comedy, and social commentary drew comparisons to the filmography of John Waters following its award-winning world premiere at Fantastic Fest in 2024, a comparison that turns out to be an […]

Review: “Paddington in Peru”

I do wonder how I might have received Paddington in Peru had I not had such an immediately ardent reaction to the two preceding films in the series. I’m not exaggerating when I say that 2014’s Paddington and 2017’s Paddington 2 are masterpieces of family entertainment that I’ve rewatched ad nauseam in the years since […]

Review: “Heart Eyes”

For a while, Heart Eyes is about as stuck on what it wants to say about love as those guys on Hinge who only seem interested in talking about beer, that one trip they took abroad five years ago, and The Office. Bearing the tagline “Romance is dead,” director Josh Ruben’s slasher/rom-com mash-up opens with […]

Review: “Grand Theft Hamlet”

To game, perchance to dream. During the United Kingdom’s third COVID-19 related lockdown in 2021, Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen— London-based actors unable to find work while their industry remained at a standstill— found a way to merge two seemingly disparate interests: Shakespeare, and Grand Theft Auto. The latter— an online open world video game […]

Review: “Presence”

Director Steven Soderbergh and writer David Koepp understand that there are infinitely more frightening things in the world than paranormal entities. That becomes increasingly evident throughout Presence, the duo’s second collaboration following their crackerjack 2022 thriller Kimi. Perhaps it’s rooted in the fact that they were each somewhat inspired by their personal close brushes with […]