Bleak, unrelenting and essential, The Painted Bird, a house of horrors disguised as a movie, is a picture of such blunt raw force that, the story goes, it drove viewers for the exits at film festivals late last year (though Václav Marhoul, the film’s…
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The “time-loop” comedy Palm Springs, lauded since its Sundance debut earlier this year, is a broad, anything goes gimmick with two likable actors in a movie that prizes contrived cleverness over all else, including honest laughs and its likable leads, who deserve a better…
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What has happened to American film directors today? Where are the sociopolitical critiques? The inquiries into government? Observations on the culture wars tearing at our seams? The balls to make a movie actually about the times in which we live? Make way for Spike…
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I had little knowledge of Pete Davidson going into the new Judd Apatow picture The King of Staten Island. I’d never seen his comic stints on SNL and was more familiar with his paparazzi-fueled, pop culture romantic dalliances than anything related to either his…
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In a few short years, Elizabeth Moss has cornered the market on emotionally fraught, through-the-ringer screen characters, from The Handmaid’s Tale’s subjugated Hester to Her Smell’s strung-out rocker and The Invisible Man’s tormented object of obsession. In her latest portrait of turmoil, Moss is…
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How much you enjoy Netflix’s The Lovebirds, a subpar exercise in clowning starring a pair of first-class comedians more talented than their material, will depend on how well you can discard the labored sitcom around them and appreciate laugh-out-loud riffing of stars Issa Rae and…
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From 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…
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As 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…
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