I sat down with director/writer/producer Michael Angelo Covino and writer Kyle Marvin at Google HQ to discuss The Climb, their film about a tumultuous but enduring friendship.…
Read MoreFrom its festival debut earlier this year to its streaming premiere this weekend on VOD, the much-praised Sundance Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize winner Never Rarely Sometimes Always, about a pregnant Pennsylvania teen who travels to Manhattan for an abortion, has been widely embraced…
Read MoreA from-the-headlines satire that plays it so broad as to be ineffective, the red vs. blue culture war comedy-thriller The Hunt isn’t funny or exciting enough to be successful at either. The self-described “most controversial movie of the year” says nothing we don’t already…
Read MoreAs evidenced by his last two pictures, eighty-three-year-old British filmmaking legend Ken Loach’s social critiques are as sharp as ever, his eyes still keen to the injustices inflicted on the working poor and, thankfully, offer no indication of slowing down. In 2016, he charted…
Read MoreInto the Wild: Benh Zeitlin on Filmmaking as Exploration of Faraway Lands, Childhood Wonders

Benh Zeitlin’s Oscar-nominated, 2012 masterpiece Beasts of the Southern Wild was a preternaturally accomplished first feature, a richly evocative portrait of a young girl’s coming of age in a Louisiana delta that was part social, and part magical, realism. As a most deserving Best…
Read MoreThe to-date best movie of 2020, Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man is a smart, sleek thriller, and one with surprising psychological gravitas. Elizabeth Moss, the go-to for characters fraying under duress, etches out a compelling portrait of a domestic abuse victim trying to put…
Read MoreIf you haven’t seen 2014’s Force Majeure, the Swedish picture about a family vacationing in the Alps who experience an avalanche scare and the domestic fallout after, then perhaps Downhill, the American remake, will do something for you. Otherwise, the new picture, an awkwardly…
Read More“A Great Way to Live a Life”: Just Mercy Stars Karan Kendrick and Tim Blake Nelson on Illuminating Real-Life Drama

In Just Mercy, young, Harvard-educated attorney Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) eschews a big law firm career in favor of starting a life-changing Alabama organization dedicated to exonerating wrongly accused death row inmates. It’s a strong, thoughtful and moving drama with as good an…
Read MoreWhen a picture is released in January featuring a big star minus any publicity, you know you’re in for a stinkeroo, and Kristin Stewart’s waterlogged Alien redux Underwater, the latest in a long line of creature features aping Ridley Scott’s 1979 suspense classic minus…
Read MoreWhatever one might say about Tom Hooper’s inexplicable new movie adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “longest running Broadway musical” and 7-time Tony winner Cats—and there will be much said—it’s an undeniable vision. A misguided one, sure, but who honestly thought this was a good…
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