The first terrific American film of 2024, Luca Guadagnino’s intoxicating Challengers is the rare, full-throttle piece of adult commercial entertainment—a smartly written, adroitly acted and technically superb piece of electric moviemaking from its opening scene to its perfect final shot. It also gives a…
Read MoreLive, Die, Repeat: Star Crossed Love and Danger in Time Hopping, Ambitious The Beast
In French filmmaker Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast, Leá Seydoux and George MacKay play triple roles in a conceptually audacious roundelay of impossible love and desire across three distinct eras. It’s a film nearly impossible to describe, at once a period costume melodrama, contemporary stalker…
Read MoreHard Miles: A Terrific Matthew Modine is Counselor Turned Cycling Coach in Redemption Road Movie
In the new drama Hard Miles, Matthew Modine gets his best role in years as a transformative youth counselor guiding a cohort of troubled young men on an audacious 762-mile bicycle trek from Watkins, Colorado to the Grand Canyon—a journey designed to promote healing…
Read MoreCivil War: Journalists in the Crossfire of Alex Garland’s Curiously Vague Provocation
Alex Garland’s button pushing Civil War offers a vision of the United States as hell, a near-future dystopian hallucination of a country torn by militias and warcraft, marked by third-term presidents, secession-driven military factions, guerrilla citizenry and wearily intrepid journalists documenting its descent. Telling…
Read More“Going Up a Hill Demands Effort, Suffering”: Matthew Modine, R.J. Daniel Hanna and Christian Sander on Hard Won Redemption of Inspirational Cycling Drama Hard Miles
Someone once observed that there is nothing in the world worse than going nowhere in life while no one seems to care. In the inspiring new picture Hard Miles (Blue Fox Entertainment, April 19), the true story of Colorado social worker turned bicycling coach…
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