Review: “Candyman” (2021)

Sometime last year, in the early throes of quarantine, I watched the 1992 film “Candyman” for the first time, in preparation for Nia DaCosta’s new take on the story, which was delayed multiple times from its original June 2020 release date due to the pandemic. I pressed play sometime after midnight, which was a mistake—something […]

Review: “The Night House”

In “The Night House,” fear stems less from supernatural occurrences and things that go bump in the night, and more from a less tangible sense of dread. The grief that consumes Beth (Rebecca Hall) in the wake of her husband Owen’s sudden suicide results in her starting to have strange dreams— dreams that bleed into […]

Review: “Respect”

The Queen of Soul deserves the best—and the best is not “Respect,” a by-the-numbers biopic that focuses on Aretha Franklin’s life from 1952 to 1972. Despite having the right talent both behind and in front of the camera, “Respect” frequently feels like sanitized studio fare, touching on some of Franklin’s personal traumas—from her drinking to […]

Review: “Annette”

Toward the end of Noah Baumbach’s 2019 film “Marriage Story,” Charlie, played by Adam Driver, breaks into an emotional rendition of Sondheim’s “Being Alive” from the musical “Company” while at a restaurant with friends, facing the dissolution of his marriage. It’s a beautiful scene—my favorite in the entire film, actually—and one that made me immediately […]

Review: “Free Guy”

Guy is not the kind of character you’d usually want to play in a shooter game. In fact, he’s not the kind of character you’d normally be able to play at all. Guy is a non-playable character, or NPC, a background figure created to populate a video game’s environment, whether to just provide atmosphere or […]

Review: “Nine Days”

In “Nine Days”, writer and director Edson Oda ponders the meaning of life. Sounds pretentious, right? But although several scenes feel like they are deliberately engineered to extract an emotional response from the audience, from its unique world-building to its heartfelt performances, “Nine Days” holds up a mirror to all of life’s highs and lows […]

Review: “The Suicide Squad”

The DC Extended Universe got off to a rough start—so much so that over the last year, we’ve seen Warner Brothers attempt to course correct the DCEU, not by investing in bringing new characters and stories to life, but by tinkering with their past failures. This past spring saw the release of Zack Snyder’s four […]

Review: “John and the Hole”

“John and the Hole” may be billed as a psychological thriller, but it is above all else a fable. The film’s title card isn’t revealed until half an hour into the movie, by which time we’ve met 13-year-old John (Charlie Shotwell) and his family, but have also just been introduced to a unique framing device. […]

Streaming Movie Reviews

Happy August to all who celebrate! Today I’m recapping some direct-to-streaming films that were released in July, including one of the year’s best movies (“Summer of Soul”) and Netflix’s very fun horror trilogy event, “Fear Street.” You can find my capsule reviews of those movies and others down below! “SUMMER OF SOUL (…OR, WHEN THE […]

Review: “Jungle Cruise”

I was in the audience at the Walt Disney Studios panel at the D23 Expo in 2019 when some of the first footage from “Jungle Cruise”—an adventure film based on the Disney Parks attraction of the same name—was premiered. But it was less the trailers themselves that made an impact, and more the surprising and […]