Review: “Toy Story 5”

I was five years old when Pixar’s first feature-length film, Toy Story, was released in theaters at the end of 1995. Now I’m 35, and the fifth installment of what’s become a classic animated series with an unfathomable amount of supplementary media and that kickstarted an entire studio’s popularity is just entering theaters. It’s so […]

Review: “Leviticus”

What do you do when the object of your desire turns against you— or you turn against it? That tension between lust and livelihood is explored quite literally in writer and director Adrian Chiarella’s debut feature Leviticus, which fast proves to be an incredible concept for a queer horror movie that’s ultimately too sparsely realized […]

Review: “Disclosure Day”

Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day— part fast-paced chase movie, part sprawling collage of cosmic ideas that marries empathy-driven storytelling with blockbuster spectacle—opens with a literal gut punch directed at the audience. The camera, assuming the position of a wrestler in the ring, rockets violently backward as he absorbs a blow from his opponent, and continues to […]

Review: “Two Seasons, Two Strangers”

I knew immediately after I watched his previous feature, All the Long Nights, on a whim in Berlin a couple years ago that Japanese filmmaker Sho Miyake was going to be one of my guys. Two Seasons, Two Strangers (which won the Golden Leopard at the 2025 Locarno Film Festival) is similarly a carefully observed […]

Review: “I Love Boosters”

Boots Riley is a loud artist. He’s loud in his visual approach to storytelling, crafting gloriously chaotic collages of color and mixed media, running the gamut from stop-motion animation and practical effects to in-camera stunt work and idiosyncratic original soundtracks. And he’s loud in his rhetoric. Riley’s incendiary 2018 feature directorial debut, Sorry to Bother […]

Review: “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu”

On the press tour for Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, director Jon Favreau cited Flash Gordon— specifically the 1936 Universal serial starring Olympic athlete Buster Crabbe, divided into 13 15-20 minute chapters that would screen before feature films in the theater— as a key influence on his movie. The space adventure was an inspiration […]

Review: “Stolen Kingdom”

When describing his proposed Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow— later to be known as EPCOT, one of Walt Disney World’s handful of unique theme parks— Walt Disney stated that he envisioned that it “will always be in a state of becoming.” It’s surprising to learn, therefore, that even as outwardly Disney Parks adhere to that […]

Review: “Mother Mary”

In Chinese mythology, the red thread of fate— one end tied to the finger of one individual, the other end to another person— symbolizes an unbreakable connection. It binds soulmates across time and space, ensuring that they are fated to find each other. In David Lowery’s cosmic ghost story Mother Mary, the bond between world-famous, […]

Review: “Michael”

During the first act of Michael— director Antoine Fuqua’s dramatization of the life and career of pop star Michael Jackson from his beginnings with the Jackson 5 in the 1960s to his Bad tour that capped off the 1980s— young Michael (Juliano Krue Valdi) steps into the recording booth at Motown’s Los Angeles headquarters in […]

Review: “You, Me & Tuscany”

As comforting as a warm platter of pasta, You, Me & Tuscany welcomes the return of the predictable, low-stakes romantic comedy to theaters. Director Kat Coiro and writer Ryan Engle’s film is the sort of movie that nowadays is typically relegated to straight-to-streaming— so much so that when I first glimpsed its poster, featuring its […]