Review: “Summertime”

The most memorable part of director Carlos López Estrada’s great 2018 debut film “Blindspotting” is its climax. Facing down the white police officer who he witnessed use lethal force on a Black man, Daveed Diggs’ Collin launches into a freestyle rap, in which he expresses his feelings on the relationship between the police and Black […]

Review: “Censor”

Censorship has played a role in film almost ever since the medium was invented. It takes different shapes and goes to varying extremes depending on the country and the time period. In Hollywood, for instance, the Production Code established to regulate content after the advent of the talking picture at the end of the 1920s […]

Review: “Zola”

“Y’all wanna hear a story about why me & this bitch here fell out???????? It’s kind of long but full of suspense.” Those words, attached to four selfies of herself with a white blonde woman, were posted on Twitter by Aziah “Zola” King in October 2015, kicking off a thread of 148 tweets detailing a […]

Review: “The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard”

Few movies recently have broken my brain so thoroughly as “The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard,” that mouthful of a clumsy title being just the first indicator of how inane this film is. If you saw its 2017 predecessor, “The Hitman’s Bodyguard,” then you have an idea of what this action comedy is like. Ryan Reynolds is […]

Review: “Gaia”

Like the best horror movies, “Gaia” is filled with imagery that is simultaneously horrifying and morbidly beautiful; disgusting, but impossible to tear your gaze from. I’m thinking primarily of a scene relatively early in director Jaco Bouwer’s feature film debut where the protagonist, a forest ranger named Gabi (Monique Rockman), finds a body slumped at […]

Streaming Movie Reviews

June may not be starting off super strong as far as new streaming releases go, but I’ve got some new mini reviews for you all regardless! If you’re thinking about trying out Paramount+ to watch the new Mark Wahlberg sci-fi film “Infinite,” you might want to reconsider. And Netflix has some new mediocre but watchable […]

Review: “In the Heights”

We’re likely all familiar with how ground-breaking Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway musical “Hamilton” was, but it’s safe to say that that show might not exist were it not for the success of Miranda’s first show, “In the Heights.” When “In the Heights” opened on Broadway in 2008, it entered a space predominantly inhabited by shows made […]

Review: “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It”

“The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” opens with what is arguably the most chilling sequence of the entire series so far. It’s 1981, and paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) are at the home of David Glatzel (Julian Hilliard), an eight-year-old boy who is possibly possessed. As the […]

Review: “Undine”

Writer/director Christian Petzold’s “Undine” opens with a conversation, the kind of conversation that most viewers will immediately recognize, and the kind that the titular protagonist (played by Paula Beer) clearly dreads. Undine is sitting across from her boyfriend, Johannes (Jacob Matschenz), at an outdoor café, and he is breaking up with her. He’s met someone […]

Review: “Spiral”

If you were to peek inside my brain while I was watching “Spiral,” my train of thought was likely running something like this: “I really regret watching this—oh actually maybe this isn’t bad—no wait I regret this.” To say that I’m not the target audience for the “Saw” franchise, of which prior to “Spiral” I […]