Movie

  • The Last Thing He Wanted

    - Jan 31, 2020
    Dee Rees’ “The Last Thing He Wanted” is incomprehensible to an almost impressive degree—usually when a movie’s narrative gets so out of control, it over-corrects itself at some point before the end. But not here. This international...
  • Sundance 2020: Relic, Amulet

    - Jan 30, 2020
    My favorite horror movie of this year’s Sundance Film Festival is Natalie Erika James’ terrifying “Relic,” a slow burn genre pic that erupts in a climactic final act that had me fidgeting and squeezing my hands...
  • Sundance 2020: Exil, Jumbo

    - Jan 30, 2020
    From Germany, writer/director Visar Morina’s “Exil” is a quietly nightmarish character study about the daily paranoia of being intentionally left out—something that everyone experiences, but very few people dare make movies about. With an extremely tempered...
  • Discomfort Abounds: Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell on Downhill

    - Jan 29, 2020
    If you have already seen “Force Majeure,” Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund’s intriguingly comedic tale of a marriage that goes in crisis mode at a ski resort in the Alps, you won’t need much hand-holding through “Downhill,”...
  • Sundance 2020: On the Record, Into the Deep, Assassins

    - Jan 29, 2020
    Everyone at Sundance this year agreed that the non-fiction slate was one of the strongest in the history of a festival that has produced more than its fair share of beloved documentaries. As the festival gets...
  • Sundance 2020: Black Bear, Shirley

    - Jan 29, 2020
    Two of the most buzzed titles on the first weekend of Sundance 2020 are at least partially about the torture of living with creative people. And both verge into the surreal, blurring the line between traditional...
  • Beanpole

    - Jan 29, 2020
    Around and around the young woman goes, spinning in her green dress until she suddenly finds that she cannot stop. The carefree giggles that had rippled from her lips, harkening back to the innocence of her...
  • Love Has No Gender: Kantemir Balagov on Beanpole

    - Jan 28, 2020
    Judged by accolades won at Europe’s pre-eminent film festival, Russia’s Kantemir Balagov may well be the world’s most lauded current filmmaker under the age of 30. In 2017, when he was 26, “Closeness,” his debut feature,...
  • Sundance 2020: Love Fraud, Lance, City So Real

    - Jan 28, 2020
    What does it say about the current state of entertainment that three of the best premieres at Sundance this year were of television docu-series? After the success of events like “OJ: Made in America,” “Finding Neverland,”...
  • Sundance 2020: Acasa, My Home, Once Upon a Time in Venezuela

    - Jan 28, 2020
    A family’s journey of culture shock that sprawls over many years and different members’ lives, “Acasa, My Home” concerns what lack of freedom comes with being quote-unquote civilized. Director Radu Ciorniciuc has assembled a chronology of...