“The Northman’s carefully choreographed, single-shot takes and startlingly lit close-ups blow the spatially disorienting and over-edited style of so many contemporary action films completely out of the fjord.”
“The power of ‘Coach to Vienna’ today rests in its mythic quality. The crux of the story may well be placed in the ‘real,’ but the affect of the mise-en-scène is that of a murderous fable.”
“‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ nearly wears out its welcome, but as far as hot dog-fingered audacity goes, the Daniels will make plenty of new eyeballs go googly.”
“‘Into the Night’ is a valuable resource for the ‘connoisseur of fear.'”
“In ‘Mass’ and ‘The Humans,’ the single location is used as a platform for ideas that seek universal understanding and collective empathy.”
“‘Cow’ strikes just the right balance between the filmmaker’s self-awareness, which punctuates the movie’s soundtrack selections, and Arnold’s long-game feminist commentary.”
“‘Candidato 34,’ a documentary short by filmmaker Ryan Marley, raises important questions about disability ethics and sociopolitical norms.”
“‘Jesus of Nazareth’ is precisely a film of moments, and Zeffirelli depicts them with expert technique.”
D.M. Palmer on the career women of ‘9 to 5’ (1980), ‘Baby Boom’ (1987), ‘Big Business’ (1988), ‘Working Girl’ (1988) and ‘Disclosure’ (1994).
“‘Phantom Thread’ is for anyone who has ever been hungry, for anyone who has ever been in love. Most of all, it’s for those people who know that love and hunger are, at their most acutely expressed, one and the same.”
“The side trips in ‘A Forbidden Orange’ are more tantalizing than the sights on the main highway.”
“The future appears bleak for the telenovela characters of ‘The Wandering Soap Opera,’ but at least they have accessible entertainment options to distract them from all the normalized chaos.”
“Alice’s imaginative genre-mashup works in fits and starts, but there is no question about the quality of lead Keke Palmer’s smooth Pam Grier-inspired performance, even if she inhabits a universe that never fully comes together for viewers.”
“What is so strange about the New Hollywood renaissance of the 70s is that it took place at a time of acute crisis for the business. It was a signal of the industry’s weakness that these cracks in the veneer were not only permitted but encouraged…”
“Singh understands the power of suggestion and how a simple turn of the head can communicate what a character might struggle to articulate.”
Mylissa Fitzsimmons Interview: Greg Carlson and the filmmaker discuss movie collecting and ‘Everything in the End.’
“Denis drenches every scene in ‘Fire’ with such a sultry sadness; the film stays captivating even as a drastic turn never seems to arrive.”
“‘Calendar Girl’ is charming but meandering, a film torn between being a historical documentary and a character study that never ends up successfully being either…”
“The end results of ‘The Batman,’ while acceptable, are insufficiently satisfying, largely because the gritty realism overtakes the story itself.”
“‘Vinyl Nation’ accentuates the positive, but the documentary can also be commended for at least raising questions about industry downsides to the record boom.”