A taxi driver and his passenger unexpectedly bond in writer-director Christy Hall’s Daddio, starring Sean Penn and Dakota Johnson on an extended trip from JFK to Midtown, one yielding plenty of talk and transformation. It’s a two-character “small” picture with a few bigger ideas…
Read More
Jeff Nichols’ new film The Bikeriders charts the birth and rise of a fictional 1960s-era Chicago motorcycle club named the Vandals, as seen through the eyes of three compelling actors: Tom Hardy as the gang’s founder and leader, Austin Butler as his young protégé…
Read More
Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders, a thundering paen to the birth of American motorcycle culture, is high-gear style and attitude eclipsing a story stuck in neutral. Inspired by Danny Lyon’s 1968 photography book of the same title—which chronicled the circa 60s Chicago exploits of biker…
Read More
The construct of identity—things we believe ourselves to be, limiting notions of what we could become and the potential for self-evolution—power Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, a feather-light comedy about a mild-mannered college professor who moonlights as a phony hit man, only to fall hard…
Read More
Would you be interested in seeing a film with little plot, depth, character or structure? How about a horror film lacking suspense but prizing extreme gore over all else? If the answer to those questions is “I’ll pass,” then steer clear of In a…
Read More
In 2015, George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road arrived with the force of a thunderclap, reinvigorating a franchise that helped to define the 80s’ action movie while catapulting Mel Gibson to stardom as a rogue ex-cop turned solitary avenger in a dystopian wasteland. The…
Read More
Watching Pamela Adlon’s razor-sharp comedy Babes recently with a packed theatrical audience signaled an unmistakable return to that collective movie audience mojo—enjoying a joke and enjoying that others are enjoying it too—which these days is hard to come by in a challenging moment of…
Read More
A wiser man than I once said that without heart there can be no art. By this barometer, Jane Schoenbrun’s arthouse curio I Saw the TV Glow is hardly the instant masterpiece it’s been inexplicably ordained. The picture may be a conceptual thesis—but it…
Read More
As movie-movie in-jokes go, David Leitch’s divertingly bombastic The Fall Guy has as much genuine reverence for its subject as gentle cynicism for its industry. That it (ever so) works is a testament to the aggressive charm offensive of star Ryan Gosling, driving a…
Read More
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 More