A terrific Vera Farmiga and Christopher Plummer drive the family road movie Boundaries, about a hard-won reconciliation between a father and daughter who, try as they might, have never been able to make their relationship work. Written and directed by Shana Feste, it’s a…
Read MoreFathers, Daughters and No Boundaries: Filmmaker Shana Feste and Actor Lewis MacDougall on Semi-Autobiographical Road Movie
Across four features, writer-director Shana Feste has displayed a compassion for her characters that defines her a distinctly humanist filmmaker, one who writes people she dearly cares for and then pushes them into difficult places. Whether parents grieving a son’s untimely death, a country and…
Read MoreHereditary, about a troubled family coming apart after a tragedy leads to an intrusion of the supernatural, is among the best, and rarest, kinds of scary movies, both a thoroughly observed examination of personal and human dynamics and diabolical descent into a place so…
Read MoreAs caper films go, Oceans 8 is an enjoyably light fizz that goes down easy even if it’s instantly forgettable. It has a solid cast having a good deal of fun over a serviceable heist. That’s it, and that is enough. Early in a…
Read MoreLeigh Whannell Upgrade-s Movie Season with Inventive New Picture that Bests Hollywood with Ideas, Intelligence
Leigh Whannell’s Upgrade, the surprise of the commercial moviegoing year, is a sleeper of a picture that outpaces the season’s big Hollywood effects movies with ideas and craft and moderate scale, a cautionary sci-fi actioner about AI, vengeance and what we are losing in…
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