Aubrey Plaza, in a career performance, is an ordinary and well-meaning person beaten down by crushing student loan debt and unfair hiring practices before turning to a life of crime to make ends meet.…
Read MoreWoman on the Verge: A Brilliant Rebecca Hall in Harrowing Psychological Thriller Resurrection
Resurrection is fascinating in what it has to say about motherhood, regret, different generations of women, relationships of manipulation and abuse, and how a person may go on from real life horror to create a different life, image, new persona, be outwardly successful but…
Read MoreIt’s easy to appreciate the picture’s pointed satirical declarations about the movie industry: that people of color are often cast to the wayside in a white dominated industry, that today's dependence on digital movie technology should be discarded in favor of traditional shot-on-film cameras,…
Read MoreThe great Leslie Manville headlines a loving picture suggesting the impact that a simple person of good values and compassion can make in the world, in unexpected ways, unlikely places and with people from different realms who share the same values.…
Read MoreThor: Love and Thunder Overdoses on Comic Self-Satisfaction at the Expense of Substance (and the Audience)
The extent to which one enjoys Thor: Love and Thunder, will depend upon a tolerance for an overplayed hand of wink-wink, nudge-nudge so broad as to suggest that hundreds of millions of dollars were spent aspiring to little else than a trivial wank.…
Read MoreDelightful Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is a Poignant Summer Surprise for all Ages
Jenny Slate triumphs in a winning performance as a diminutive and unlikely hero contemplating life, community and finding a place in the world.…
Read MoreEntertaining Elvis a Showcase for Sensational Austin Butler, Triumphing Over Spastically Directed Opus
In a movie cage fight between director and actor, Baz Luhrmann tries very hard—and nearly succeeds—at minimizing star Austin Butler’s dazzling turn as The King of rock-n-roll in Elvis, a wildly overdetermined and largely superficial collection of gee-whiz film techniques masquerading as a biopic…
Read MoreFrank, Insightful Leo Grande: Adult Sexuality and Awakening Courtesy of a Richly Rewarding Emma Thompson
An incisive, bold adult drama about aging and sexuality, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande finds Emma Thompson in top form as widowed former educator soliciting the services of a young sex worker in a bid toward enlightenment—initially a physical pursuit but ultimately yielding…
Read MoreJurassic World: Dominion is Big, Loud, Overstuffed…and (Slightly) Better Than You’ve Heard
Jurassic World: Dominion, the sixth film in a bloated series that lost its magic about five films ago yet continues barreling ahead, believing there is still wonder in seeing photorealistic dinosaurs onscreen (which hasn’t truly been the case since Steven Spielberg’s 1993 original), certainly…
Read MoreDavid Cronenberg's latest provocation, about a dystopian world where humans feel no pain, somatic mutations reign and surgical procedures are aphrodisiacal performance art, finds the Canadian auteur comfortably in his wheelhouse of envelope-pushing body horror, visionary sci-fi and icy social critique.…
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