Review: “The Encampments”

On April 17, 2024, a group of pro-Palestine students began an encampment on New York City’s Columbia University campus, standing in solidarity with Gaza in the broader context of the Gaza war that began on October 7, 2023, and demanding that the university divest from Israel. The immediate and global impact of the movement happened […]

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Review: “The Pee Pee Poo Poo Man”

Situated somewhere in the neighborhood of a ripped-from-the-headlines true crime tale, absurdist comedy, tech age paranoid thriller, and slice-of-life indie, you’ll find The Pee Pee Poo Poo Man. Writer and director Braden Sitter culled the inspiration for his bizarre feature film from a viral news event that occurred in Toronto in 2019, when a man […]

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Review: “Thunderbolts*”

There’s a string of scenes in the final stretch of Thunderbolts*— the final installment of Phase 5 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, for those still keeping track— that’s as stirring and soulful as anything across the franchise’s 36 (and counting) film history. But like it’s title, the movie comes with an asterisk: any story element […]

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Review: “The Shrouds”

I thought I was done writing. Then I saw David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds. Grief fucks people up. In all the expected ways, sure: the depressive episodes prompted by the gaping void the loss of someone— or something— beloved create a ripple effect that spreads about their circle of friends and family like a disease, the […]

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Review: “Sinners”

Clarksdale, Mississippi, 1932. The signs that this is the Jim Crow-era South perpetually exist on the periphery of the lives of the town’s Black residents: in the fields flecked with white cotton as far as the eye can see, where Black sharecroppers labor day in and day out, and in Hogwood (David Maldonado), the white […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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