If you haven’t seen Sidney Lumet’s 1974 version of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express (or read the novel, for that matter), then Kenneth Branagh’s sometimes entertaining new film version may just win you over. It’s a movie with a fine ensemble and enough…
Read MoreThe new drama Thank You for Your Service is as powerfully written and acted an examination of the experience war veterans face upon returning home as the movies have seen in ages. It’s also an important one, which sounds perhaps hyperbolic, but it really…
Read MoreCruelty inflicted as much on the audience as its characters, The Killing of a Sacred Deer is an absurdist nightmare, a morality play lacking any trace of recognizable human behavior and a chore to experience once you realize that director Yorgos Lanthimos is playing…
Read MoreTodd Haynes’ new picture Wonderstruck, about a pair of deaf children in different time periods making pilgrimages to Manhattan, is a curious disappointment with little cumulative dramatic impact. It strives for magic, wonder and to transport us, but as a story it never delivers…
Read MoreOne of the best studio movies of the year, Only the Brave is a movie about heroism, family and commitments that breathes life into a familiar movie formula, done here with terrific writing, acting and a genuinely gripping final act. It’s the type of…
Read MoreA portrait of childhood as an escape from the hard realities of socioeconomic misfortune and emotionally ill-equipped parents, Sean Baker’s The Florida Project is an observation of a handful of South Florida motel denizens trying their damndest to survive while their children somehow manage to…
Read MoreA magnificent technical achievement, Blade Runner 2049 must be seen on the big screen for is visual and aural accomplishments which are, frankly, staggering. As directed by Denis Villeneuve, shot by Roger Deakins and scored by Hans Zimmer, it’s as intensely cinematic as anything…
Read MoreThe ad campaign is selling Battle of the Sexes as a high comedy, but it’s also a complex behind-the-scenes relationship drama as much about tennis legend Billie Jean King’s hidden identity politics as the overt social ones driving the plot. Directed by Valerie Faris…
Read MoreThe best love stories don’t have happy endings, and Chicago filmmaker Justin Nico Flocco’s Sofia, shot in Argentina and chronicling the stranger-in-a-strange-land odyssey of a young American on the streets of Buenos Aires, is a brief, polished love and loss tale heavy on mood…
Read MoreA tale told with sound and fury signifying very little, Darren Aronofsky’s mother! may be his first movie misfire. In a career of audacious pictures, proof positive of membership a very small club of contemporary auteurs, Aronofsky is as visionary as they come—even when…
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