It’s one thing for a group of untried kid actors to take out a hydrocephaloid sewer clown. It was, by all accounts, a scarefree nap, but at best there was something this clown-hater found intrinsically inviting about the kids-in-peril novelty it waved. But watching a group of (mostly) well-paid (mostly) …
Writer-director Trey Edward Shults follows his debut sensation Krisha with a close-quarters horror thriller set in a post-pandemic world. Joel Edgerton plays the head of an isolated family whose carefully regulated order is upset when some thirsty wretches come knocking on their door. (Well, breaking into their home, actually, but …
A New York beat cop, having just spent his last dollar on his weekly Lotto ticket, and not wanting to stiff a waitress on her fifteen percent of two coffees, disdains the standard line ("Catch you later") and, in order to underscore his earnestness, goes through some laboriously written dialogue …
Lily overcomes a traumatic childhood to embark on a new life. A chance meeting with a neurosurgeon sparks a connection but Lily begins to see sides of him that remind her of her parents' relationship. Adapted from the Colleen Hoover novel.
Lily overcomes a traumatic childhood to embark on a new life. A chance meeting with a neurosurgeon sparks a connection but Lily begins to see sides of him that remind her of her parents' relationship. Adapted from the Colleen Hoover novel.
The Hollywood model of sexual promiscuity meeting with horrific reprisal was first presented to me in the 1960 version of Where the Boys Are: tramps who “put out” deserve to be struck down by oncoming traffic. It figures that It Follows’ updated chastening procedure finds writer-director David Robert Mitchell cleverly …
The precocious first feature of Kevin Brownlow (better known as a film historian and preservationist), begun when he was eighteen and completed six years later. It has a viable alternative-universe premise -- what if the Nazis had won the war and occupied England? -- but it hasn't the wherewithal to …
A pampered heiress jumps her father's yacht on the eve of her wedding, and sets off on a very educational tour of grassroots America, learning empirically about the art of hitchhiking, haystack-sleeping, donut-dunking and so forth, with a wiseguy newspaperman serving as her gruff guide to Real Life and True …
A veteran detective teams up with a rookie cop to track down a serial killer who taunts the police by identifying the next victim. Directed by Ryoo Seung-wan.
The true story of the 17th-century liberal-minded and materialistic (finest library in all Mexico) nun, poet, and playwright, Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz, becomes a moving tribute to the creative impulse and a first-rate movie all around: feminist, humanist; ascetic, aesthetic; inspirational in a nonsectarian, secular way; the furthest …
Into a complacent marriage comes temptation, the wet-lipped Kerry Washington, a Platonic old friend with vertiginous décolletage. Chris Rock is the star, albeit no actor, and he's also the director and co-writer, nominally inspired by the last of Eric Rohmer's "Six Moral Tales," Chloe in the Afternoon, 1972. (The "Fin" …
Children behave! Peter Dinklage and Elle Fanning star in an apocalyptic two-hander. Reed Morano photographs and directs.
Larry Cohen's followup to It's Alive is fun in inverse proportion to the high seriousness with which it is played. But it is not (Robin Wood to the contrary) the outstanding American movie of its year. It picks up the thread of the original with a gripping opening scene in …
Sam is desperate to fit in at school, rejecting her Indian culture and family to be like everyone else. When a mythological demonic spirit latches onto her former best friend, she must come to terms with her heritage in order to defeat it.
Davis Guggenheim, the ignored director of An Inconvenient Truth (all glory to Al Gore), essays a different sort of documentary, arranging a “summit” of electric guitarists, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, The Edge of U2, and Jack White of the White Stripes and the Raconteurs. Not much comes of the …