On Swift Horses, a period melodrama about hidden love and sexual identity in 1950s America, is so tasteful it makes you wish it would cut loose with the abandon its characters experience in their frequently heated moments of self-discovery. Featuring an attractive cast led…
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In his beautifully mounted spellbinder Sinners, writer-director Ryan Coogler (Black Panther, Creed) mixes tones, styles and genres to supremely entertaining heights in a boldly confident piece of studio movie showmanship. Across a sumptuous, 137-minute picture about a pair of ne’er-do-well twin brothers returning from the big…
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Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza’s Warfare is a relentless, war is hell exercise delivering exactly what its title promises: an immersive descent into the chaos of combat. Collaborators on last year’s provocation Civil War (Garland helmed with Mendoza as military advisor), the pair has…
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From its well-cut trailer, The Alto Knights appeared to have all of the requisites of a good studio entertainment—Oscar-winning director Barry Levinson helming, star Robert DeNiro back in beloved mafioso mode and screenwriter Nicolas Pileggi (Goodfellas, Casino, The Irishman) penning another true tale of wise-guy intrigue. Yet watching The…
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There won’t be a better movie performance this year than Jonathan Majors’ work in Magazine Dreams, the beleaguered indie that captured the 2023 Sundance Jury Prize and was headed for awards season consideration—that is, until Majors’ subsequent, high-profile domestic assault arrest and misdemeanor conviction saw…
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With his new spy thriller Black Bag, Steven Soderbergh handily demonstrates that intelligent, made-for-adults entertainment isn’t yet dead. It’s been some time since an American film has made us sit up, lean in and follow a plot that puts us through the paces, and…
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American filmmakers have mostly abandoned incisive political cinema. A few years ago, I lamented this to Oliver Stone, who plainly noted that neither studios nor audiences want political thrillers or government critiques anymore. The new Mickey 17, however, sees a world-class Korean filmmaker using…
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If a horror movie scares you, swell. If not, no sale. And last year, Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs, about a heartland satanist spree killer, was an A24 marketing success (“Scariest Movie Ever!”) and a shivery chiller courtesy of an all-in Nicolas Cage as its titular…
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Whether scrappy indie (Terrifier, Late Night with the Devil, Strange Darling), studio gloss (A Quiet Place: Day One) or awards prestige (The Substance, Noseratu), horror films almost always bank tremendous profits. Last year alone they bludgeoned near a billion dollars from moviegoers with a…
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Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths reunites the legendary British auteur with actress Marianne Jean-Baptiste, who received an Oscar nod for his searing 1996 drama Secrets and Lies, in which she played the accomplished adult daughter of a downtrodden mother who gave her up at birth. That mother, indelibly…
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