Review: “Sugarcane”

In 2021, numerous unmarked graves were discovered on the grounds of St. Joseph’s Mission, a former Canadian residential school situated near the Sugarcane Indian Reserve near Williams Lake in British Columbia. This wasn’t the only school where such a discovery was made. It is, however, where directors Julian Brave Noisecat and Emily Kassie choose to […]

Review: “Wicked”

Jon M. Chu’s 2021 film adaptation of the Broadway musical In the Heights made me suspect that he wasn’t a particularly skilled director of musicals. His long-gestating film adaptation of Wicked confirmed it. It’s a shame, because even more so than Heights, there’s a legitimately great movie musical rocking around inside that two hour and […]

Review: “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat”

Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat— Johan Grimonprez’s documentary tracking the events leading up to the 1961 assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba that’s comprised entirely of archival footage and audio and text excerpts from a wide range of sources and first-hand accounts— opens at the close. Text rippling across the screen illustrate the dialogue between […]

Review: “Anora”

Who is Anora, and what does she want? It’s a question I found repeatedly popping up in the back of my mind as I watched writer and director Sean Baker’s film, the title of which shares his protagonist’s name but not much interest in answering those queries. There are a few points I can confirm. […]

Review: “Memoir of a Snail”

If there’s one person who has experience with just about every seemingly good thing that life throws at you blowing up in your face, it’s me. So maybe that’s why I became so strongly wrapped up in the story of Memoir of a Snail, even as its tugging of its protagonist from terrible life event […]

Review: “Emilia Pérez”

Jacques Audiard has been directing movies for 30 years, often playing with genre— from the crime picture A Prophet to the romantic drama Rust and Bone to the western The Sisters Brothers— but I wish I could be more impressed by the supreme confidence with which he pulls off his most audacious feature to date, […]

Review: “Saturday Night”

In 2008, Jason Reitman served as a guest writer and director on Saturday Night Live for one week. The filmmaker already had two acclaimed features under his belt— the 2005 satire Thank You For Smoking and the 2007 coming-of-age comedy Juno— but cites participating in the freewheeling energy that goes into mounting the weekly live […]

Review: “Joker Folie à deux”

Joker Folie à deux opens with the sort of stylishly vacuous sequence director Todd Phillips is so great at realizing: an animated short modeled after Warner Brothers’ vintage Looney Tunes cartoons starring Joker— the psychopathic clown with a sadistic sense of humor, most known for existing as the arch villain to DC Comics’ superhero Batman— […]

Review: “Sleep”

The scary part is the lack of control. When you’re asleep, anything can happen. Your mind can dream up things wonderful and terrible. You can talk out loud. You can get up and move and walk with zero conscious control over your limbs. Recently, I fell asleep at my desk while working on a job […]

Review: “Close Your Eyes”

Close Your Eyes is Victor Erice’s old man movie, but it feels reductive to say so. It’s also his love letter to cinema, but that is an even more inadequate attribution. After all, all of the filmmaker’s works, scattered as they have been over the decades, celebrate cinematic magic in some fashion. In The Spirit […]