Reviews
‘The Inheritance’ Review
For the audience being invited into it, the space at the physical and spiritual center of “The Inheritance” feels somewhat suspended in time. Asili dispenses of any temptation of narrative urgency in favor of documentary-like vignettes that can shake off one aesthetic for another in any given moment.
‘The Father’ Review
Florian Zeller's confident film debut is an Oscar contender that creeps up to the line of horror and boasts some of Anthony Hopkins's finest on-screen moments.
'Boogie' Review
Eddie Huang's first feature effort attempts to put an intergenerational immigrant-story spin on your standard sports tale.
'Lucky' Review
Natasha Kermani's new movie has whiffs of belonging in the busy time-loop subgenre, but it turns those attributes into a commentary that's all its own.
‘Raya and the Last Dragon’ Review
Walt Disney Animation’s latest is its most action-packed entry since “Big Hero 6” and its most soulful since “Moana.”
‘Tom and Jerry’ Review
The 2021 revival is a strange and self-defeating movie, one that begins by flexing its pop culture awareness muscles before going on to show a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes Tom and Jerry so enduring and sadistically endearing.
‘Cherry’ Review
The Russo Brothers’ “Avengers: Endgame” encore finds them unburdened and ultimately undone by the air-tight calculations of that superhero enterprise (and perhaps providing clarity as to who the success of the Infinity Saga’s finale ultimately resides with).
‘I Care a Lot’ Review
An occasionally cunning, candy cane-sleek thriller that is far more interesting for where it arrives than how it arrives there, “I Care a Lot” is the kind of movie you come away from unable to reflect on the first 110 minutes because the last five are so ferocious in vying for the spotlight that we feel compelled to at least humor it.
‘Judas and the Black Messiah’ Review
If the story being told in Shaka King’s “Judas and the Black Messiah” – a mighty impressive sophomore feature chronicling the influence and 1969 police assassination of Chicago Black Panthers leader Fred Hampton when he was just 21 years old – was any weightier, it would threaten to burst out of the TV sets that most HBO Max subscribers will likely be watching the movie through upon its Friday arrival.
‘Land’ Review
The new drama “Land” finds the venerable Robin Wright boldly treading into unknown territory to contend with new challenges in more ways than one, and at the project’s center is a self-referential awareness that I’m sure its star must appreciate to a certain extent. Having spent the better part of the last half-decade popping up in high-profile blockbusters and helping to tug Netflix’s “House of Cards” across the finish line sans Spacey, “Land” sees the accomplished actress in the director’s chair of a feature film for the first time.
‘Sator’ Review
Writer-director Jordan Graham did much more than write and direct over the seven-year production of “Sator,” his effectively creepy and unexpectedly personal backwoods tale.
‘At the Ready’ Review (Sundance)
Politics, personal histories and border region complexities tangle in the new documentary from filmmaker and Texas journalist Maisie Crow.
‘The Blazing World’ Review (Sundance)
“The Blazing World” joins the hand-drawn counterculture fantasia of “Cryptozoo” and the nuclear-blasted dystopian rescue mission “Prisoners of the Ghostland” as a strong contender for the most WTF experience to be had at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.
‘Life in a Day 2020’ Review (Sundance)
As was the case with its predecessor, the title of “Life in a Day 2020” says it all—even if saying it all in regards to 2020 means something more consequential and ostensibly ambitious.
‘Cusp’ Review (Sundance)
Constructed with a spirit of take-life-as-it-comes open-endedness that feels both invigorating and dangerous, “Cusp” becomes a documentary about three young girls trying to avoid being defined by the boys and men in their lives. Its ultimate accomplishment is that we absolutely come to believe they can, as well as triumph over so much more, despite the tensions lurking in the underbrush of teenage ennui.
‘Cryptozoo’ Review (Sundance)
Molding a bevy of influences into a work so singularly bizarre that you swear you’d imagined the whole thing once it’s over, Dash Shaw’s “Cryptozoo” – a hand-drawn fantasia of sex, fantasy-tinged espionage and counterculture revolution – is the kind of effort that taps expectations of animation being solely for children on the shoulder before setting it ablaze, gathering the ashes and rocketing the remains into space.
‘One for the Road’ Review (Sundance)
Pitch-perfect needle drops courtesy of Elton John and The Rolling Stones can only get you so far when wading into nostalgic waters, and somewhere soon after the midpoint of Sundance 2021 flick “One for the Road,” it finds itself suddenly submerged.
‘Son of Monarchs’ Review (Sundance)
“Son of Monarchs” is a film as invested in its scientific arcs as the emotional ones of its reserved protagonist, and it’s a contradictory work—rigid and improvisational, didactic and artistic, fully aware of itself and stylistically unmoored. And it’s entirely embracing of those contradictions.
‘The Most Beautiful Boy in the World’ Review (Sundance)
“The Most Beautiful Boy in the World'' showcases an inherent element of nonfiction storytelling that too many documentarians end up disguising in the final work—the idea that the questions we initially set out to answer are not always the ones that are most intriguing later on.
‘The Little Things’ Review
“The Little Things” is a classic old blood/new blood story coursing through clogged narrative arteries, enlisting Denzel Washington as venerable ex-investigator Joe Deacon and a robotic Rami Malek the down-to-business young cop who has been successful up to this point in keeping the ugliness of the occupation out of his cozy home life. Joe hasn’t been as lucky; he’s psychologically worn down by a series of past slayings, the culprit of which remains free. But something else about that history keeps peeling the scab open afresh, and as much as “The Little Things” is about us watching Joe following a killer’s breadcrumb trail, it also fashions us into detectives trying to piece together his past.