“Confronted, challenged and upended throughout the course of Michael Cimino’s ‘The Deer Hunter,’ conventional notions of masculinity are routinely conditional to the film’s dominant shifts in setting and tone.”
“To use a gaming term, it’s got replay value, but it might leave those looking for a cohesive, more-traditional narrative choosing a different path.”
“In ‘Vox Lux,’ pop music is an emblem of pop culture and the distractions we use to soften the growing trauma of the nation. It also plays into the main question that Corbet raises: just how long can we cling onto pop culture before society gets so bad that nothing will help?”
“This truly does feel like a religious fable farmed out via an automated word generator, one funded by corporate studio execs and programmed by Madison Avenue hacks and Instagram influencers.”
“Liminality is the coin of Martel’s realm in ‘Zama,’ and she manages to make the excruciating uncertainty of the long pause an engrossing experience for the audience…”
“In their own ways, Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger all go beyond the real world, and beyond mortality.”
“Lanthimos is a master at challenging the notions of what a horror film can and should be, simply because he elicits the genre’s most key component, fear, out of his viewers.”
“With all its supporting superheroes and hints of story threads, ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ is bankable for sequels and spin-offs. As long as there’s creative juice for this world, any follow-up would feel inspired.”
“‘The Mule’ will not be remembered as one of the Eastwood classics. In all likelihood, it will be boxed in with two superior Eastwood films as part of a collector’s pack.”
“The power of ‘First Reformed’ is rooted in Schrader’s ability to take a number of clear forbearers — Bresson, Dreyer, Pialat — and twist them into a style that feels wholly unique and rooted in a personal set of values and obsessions.”