The precise genre categorization of Sebastián Silva’s Tyrel is difficult to pin down in concrete terms, namely because it is based entirely on the specific cultural baggage each individual viewer brings to the film. For many, it’s a horror movie;…
Mortal Engines Movie Review: Beautiful visuals can only distract from a convoluted story for so long
The world has been forever broken after an apocalyptic event: cities uprooted and placed on wheels to traverse what remains while trying to be the dominant force and survive. Hugo Weaving is a villain (again) bent on conquering whatever gets…
Ben is Back Movie Review: Strong performances anchor an otherwise unbalanced film
Rock bottom, recovery, relapse, rinse and repeat. This is the formula for your typical sympathetic tale about the crippling cycle of addiction. Add to that a promising, affluential white youth for palatability and you essentially have a good majority of…
The Front Runner Movie Review: The Hugh Jackman political drama fails to challenge itself
The Front Runner is custom made for an election year awards campaign. Featuring a salacious campaign scandal, a group of relentless journalists desperate to uncover the truth, and a veteran actor looking to pivot his superhero image, the film is…
The Other Side of the Wind Sees Long-Awaited Lost Film is a Tired Yet Furious Bridge-Burning
We’ll never actually see Orson Welles’ final film The Other Side of the Wind, no more than we’ll ever actually see Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) or Touch of Evil (1958). But whereas the latter two were taken out of…
Can You Ever Forgive Me? Movie Review: Melissa McCarthy delivers the best performance of her career
At the outset, Marielle Heller’s Can You Ever Forgive Me? wallows so deeply into the loneliness of down on her luck biographer Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy) that you may feel the people around you in the theater disappear. We see…
Burning Movie Review: Lee Chang-dong’s Newest Masterpiece is Haunting and Magnificent
How complacent are we in our inability to retain memory in the fashion in which it is materialized? How complicit are we when inability to see past our own desires, our own justifications and belief systems leads us astray? When…