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 […]

Review: “The Drama”

What did she do? That was the core question following the initial trailer for Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama, the one driving the intrigue for this darkly funny, cringe-inducing film about a seemingly idyllic relationship that runs off the rails in the lead-up to a wedding. Gathered around a table in a dimly lit caterer’s dining […]

Review: “The Bride!”

In this video for Letterboxd, Jessie Buckley cites Barbara Stanwyck’s performance in the 1933 drama Baby Face as a key influence on her dual role as Mary Shelley and the Bride of Frankenstein in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! (the obvious comp is Elsa Lanchester’s dual role as the same in James Whale’s 1935 film, although […]

Review: “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert”

There are few greater pleasures in life than watching Elvis Presley when he’s completely in the zone. And while the singer’s earlier career appearances in Hollywood musicals, concert specials, and TV shows such as The Ed Sullivan Show certainly capture the seductive charisma and animalistic physicality that sent teenagers’ hearts thumping and older folks’ moral […]