Review: “Wake Up Dead Man”

It would be so easy to make every entry in the Knives Out series a cookie cutter whodunit, coasting by on the charms of lead Daniel Craig and the increasingly starry revolving door of famous faces who populate the rest of the cast. It’s a credit to series creator, writer and director Rian Johnson, however, […]

Review: “Percy Green: Man of ACTION”

I’m not from St. Louis, but I’ve lived here long enough that it feels egregious that I’d never heard of activist Percy Green before. And I wonder how many other St. Louisans possess that same gap in their knowledge of local history. It’s a hole that director Joseph Puleo seeks to fill with his documentary […]

Review: “Highest 2 Lowest”

It begins with a sweeping shots of the New York City skyline, just as that magic hour when the sun begins to peak over the horizon hits. The light dazzlingly reflects off the buildings, the water and windows of icons tall and small appearing gloriously warm as the strains of “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” […]

Review: “Catching Bullets”

In 2019, St. Louis, Missouri experienced the highest per capital murder rate of any city in the United States, a sobering statistic whose resolution was made all the more pressing by the fact that 13 of those deaths recorded over that summer were children. Within the first three hours of 2020, the city had already […]

Review: “Sally”

Many things can be attributed to Sally Ride. She was the first American woman in space. She was also the youngest at the time of her initial flight in 1983. Before that, she served as the ground-based CapCom for the second and third space shuttle flights, and helped develop the shuttle’s robotic arm; after that, […]

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 […]

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: “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: “Road House” (2024)

If there’s one thing Rowdy Herrington’s 1989 sleaze-fest Road House understood, it was how best to utilize Patrick Swayze’s appeal as an object of desire. The morning after Swayze’s cool bouncer James Dalton blows into town, having taken a job at a rough-and-tumble bar called the Double Deuce in Jasper, Missouri (a tiny town that […]

Review: “Maestro”

“Great gowns, beautiful gowns.” The comment thrown by Aretha Franklin in reference to Taylor Swift in a 2014 interview that has often been read as god-tier shade is the first reaction that popped into my head as the credits rolled on Bradley Cooper’s sophomore feature, Maestro. Cooper’s portrait of legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein […]