☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ The first time I saw Digger , I went into it with a set of expectations built on some misassumptions. I was looking for flaws, and...

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ For months, Digger has been so wildly hyped and also so shrouded in mystery that it had developed a reputation even before anyone sa...

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ There is a brutal physicality to  The Weight  that is both impressive and difficult to watch. I don’t know with any certainty how mu...

☆ ☆ ☆ If Alfred Hitchcock had directed The Bad News Bears or School of Rock , the result might have looked a little bit like The Musical , a...

☆ ☆ ☆½ Had it been made a generation ago, Coyote vs. Acme  would have been hailed as a visionary masterpiece, a film of technical innovati...

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ An unusually strong year for movies continues with Tony , a highly fictionalized account of Anthony Bourdain's formative years bef...

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ Among the many seemingly impossible tasks accomplished by the remarkable documentary Boorman and the Devil  is its refusal to turn...

☆ ☆½ The End of Oak Street  tries so hard to be an Amblin/Steven Spielberg film from the 1980s that it's almost lovable in its earnestness...

Or, What Do You Want to Do When You Grow Up?

Or, When Planning Meets Real Life

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ The same rule applies to Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey  as to every other film ever made: Is it a good story? Does it hold your ...

Not many films have been endlessly analyzed and examined as Roman Polanski's Chinatown . It would be foolish for me to try to add anything t...

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ There isn't a moment in Olivia Wilde's The Invite that feels false. I haven't seen The People Upstairs , the 2020 movie on which...

☆ ☆ ☆ ½ Leviticus  continues the 2026 horror-movie trend of positing the notion that the greatest horror in the world isn't a monster or t...

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ In the '50s there were nuclear-created monsters. In the '60s, the dread of other people. In the '70s there was the devil. The '80s...

☆ ☆ This is painful to see. Disclosure Day  should be top-notch Steven Spielberg. This is, after all, the filmmaker who created Close Encoun...

This piece of flash-fiction was inspired by Edward Hopper’s painting Rooms by the Sea. A link to the painting is included after the story. Maybe he is napping . Maybe he’s shaving, getting ready ...

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆½ Weather forecasting isn't a subject that has lent itself to particularly memorable movies. There's Twister , sort of, and Nicolas C...

☆ ☆ ☆½ Do not let it be said that The Sheep Detectives  does not deliver on its promise. The movie features sheep detectives. They are try...

☆ ☆½ Obsession  continues a recent trend of horror films that mistake "slow burn" for "slow pacing." There's a corker of a story here, one...

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ For the first 40 minutes or so of the brief but potent Blue Heron , it's not quite clear what we're supposed to be tracking. Sophy...

☆ ☆ ☆ ½ Mother Mary  is a movie with keen insight into human nature, into the way people form and then break attachments and what that...

☆ ☆ ☆ ½ Exit 8  opens with a man on his way to a temp job. He's riding in a packed Japanese subway train, and not everything is going we...

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ Project Hail Mary  is a popcorn flick, a movie whose primary, maybe even sole, ambition is to entertain and delight audiences who ...

☆ ☆ ☆ ½   A digital wristwatch doesn't tick, but it might as well, because the ticking clock is the classic device that brings constant ...

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½   The prevailing view of movies made by streaming networks is that they dumb things down too much, that distracted audiences s...

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ Pillion does something so rare in movies it's easy not to notice how special it is: It presents us with a relationship that we don...

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆   Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie  puts me in a bind. I saw it as part of AMC's "Screen Unseen" series, which presents movi...

☆ ☆ ☆ ½   Send Help  makes you feel at least a little sorry for Dylan O'Brien. He's a terrific actor. He was jaw-droppingly good in the ...

☆ ☆   "Keep your heart open," exhorts the poster for Hamnet , the wildly acclaimed, careful, quiet, and deeply earnest movie that almost...

☆ ☆ ☆ ½   Movie screens used to be filled with films like Song Sung Blue , which exist for no reason other than to entertain a large num...

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆   For many of us, Disneyland has always existed. Even for those old enough to have known a world without the physical theme park...

☆ ☆ ☆   Moviemaking is a curious art form. Individuals are recognized as the creator of films, and yet dozens, scores, hundreds, even thou...

☆ ☆ ½   At the beginning of Is This Thing On? , Alex Novak (Will Arnett) really needs a drink, because that's the only way he can think of...

Emerald lives by routine. Aging and alone, she anchors herself in ordinary rituals, and takes comfort in revisiting the moments that shaped her life: love, ambition, grief, and a quiet sense of purpos...

☆ ☆ ☆ ½   A man named Marcelo walks into the lobby of a popular movie theater in Recife, Brazil, in early 1977. As he does, three women emer...

☆ ☆ ☆ ½   Those of us of a certain age remember our friends who had a certain habit — the nice word for addiction — back in the 1980s and ...

☆ ☆ ☆ ½   In the endlessly fascinating, book-length interview between Alfred Hitchcock and François Truffaut, Hitchcock says of his work...

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½   I walked into Avatar: Fire and Ash as a tired, jaded adult and walked out a 10-year-old kid, having spent three hours staring ...

As I write this, it's coming up on Christmas, and the ubiquitous A Christmas Story  has begun appearing. It's no longer limited to a 24-hour...

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ Peter Falk did it every few weeks for years. Angela Lansbury did it every Sunday night for a decade. Agatha Christie did it 75 times...

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ Robert Grainier doesn't know who he is. He has no birthday, no parents, no hometown. He has only himself. Most of us aren't like G...

☆ ☆ ☆ Now, wait just a clock tick. On Broadway, Wicked runs 2 hours, 30 minutes with a 15-minute intermission. On film, Wicked: Part 1  an...

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ A word of warning for those about to watch Bugonia : Afterward, expect to find yourself falling down a rabbit hole of inquiry abou...

☆ ☆ ☆ Some people will argue (its director, Lynne Ramsay, says wrongly) that  Die My Love  is about post-partum depression. I agree with Ram...

☆ ☆ ☆ It's an awful, damning truth that far too many Americans — and, based on global affairs, it can be assumed citizens of many other coun...

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ There aren't many pleasant surprises in the world these days, which makes  Roofman something to cherish. It's a disarming surpri...

☆ ☆ ☆½ The easiest and most obvious movie to which to compare Aziz Ansari's  Good Fortune  is Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life , but th...

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ More and more, the question to ask about movies isn't, "Is it any good?" but, "Can I watch it at home while doing sixteen other th...