“You don’t have to be a queer teenage activist to relate to Amy, but imagine what ‘Booksmart’ might mean to those who have not seen themselves regularly represented on the mainstream screen.”
“‘Fonotune: An Electric Fairytale’ can’t escape feeling like a zany music video concept, lacking the energy or plot to sustain a feature. For all the beauty and allure that FINT’s wacky film offers, the emptiness strikes hardest, possibly not in the way the director intended.”
“Despite entertaining directorial flourishes often accompanied by striking stock footage cutaways — from Carl Sagan to a history lesson on African American hair care products — Russo-Young can’t set her hooks into much beyond the postcard images of the Big Apple.”
“As a whole, ‘John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum’ is a fun romp and continues the Greek/pulp mythology set up in ‘John Wick: Chapter 2.’ In future installments, Stahelski might want to tone down the campiness, otherwise the series will lunge into self-parody.”
“One of the greatest pleasures of ‘See You Yesterday’ is that the challenges and complexities of the jumps get better as the story unfolds.”
“While Springsteen takes the American dream and helps everyone navigate through its dismantling, Chadha packs it all up with ‘Blinded by the Light” and makes it speak to an entirely different country and a whole new generation.”
“Those seeking some deep-dive exploration into Tolkien and his process will likely get more out of a standard biography or documentary. As it stands, ‘Tolkien’ is a merely adequate celebration of the author and the power of art.”
“Written and directed by Michael K. Feinstein, ‘The Browsing Effect’ highlights the beauty of lasting connections. Despite pressing too hard on social media tropes, the film includes numerous charming performances and genuine laugh-out-loud moments.”
“Attieh and Garcia have ironically made a movie that metatextually gives Sergio the respect he doesn’t deserve. If he were real, he’d be absolutely thrilled to be the star of a movie that’s so unique, and so genuinely cool.”
“‘Wild Rose’ has the makings of a movie deathly afraid of validating a ‘bad mother,’ even if it comes at the expense of the protagonist’s internal consistency.”
