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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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In French filmmaker Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast, Leá Seydoux and George MacKay play triple roles in a conceptually audacious roundelay of impossible love and desire across three distinct eras. It’s a film nearly impossible to describe, at once a period costume melodrama, contemporary stalker…
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In the new drama Hard Miles, Matthew Modine gets his best role in years as a transformative youth counselor guiding a cohort of troubled young men on an audacious 762-mile bicycle trek from Watkins, Colorado to the Grand Canyon—a journey designed to promote healing…
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