Film Reviews & Insights
Tuner
Tuner is a relatively simple story, and it is a film that offers no true innovations, in plot or character, but is rather about the how well it is told, rather [...]
I Love Boosters
Boots Riley's sophomore feature follows the same formula as his debut, Sorry to Bother You—a film that holds immense visual invention, but one where the invention is ultimately overcooked. The [...]
Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu
The fourth anthology film in the Star Wars saga from co-writer/director Jon Favreau and co-writer Dave Filoni, The Mandalorian and Grogu certainly carries on the spirit of the hit Disney+ [...]
The Wizard of the Kremlin
Olivier Assayas is a director who has done many different sorts of films, but ultimately they are always centered on intense characters caught in remarkable situations. Sometimes, the works are [...]
Obsession
Magic in all of its darkest forms appears to be in the zeitgeist again. Hollywood seems to go through phases of preoccupation with exploring the depths and potential costs of, [...]
Diamonds
Diamonds is a special film. It is, at times, a bit melodramatic, but only in the best sense of the word. It is inarguably passionate and darkly funny. It contains wisdom [...]
Marc by Sofia
Sofia Coppola's documentary Marc by Sofia is like a scrapbook turned into celluloid; it gives an insider's view of the fashion world that is personal, passionate, artful, and always insightful. [...]
Two Pianos
Two Pianos is the new, highly melodramatic work from the French writer-director Arnaud Desplechin starring Francois Civil as a pianist, brough back to his hometown of Lyon, by his former [...]
Two Women
There is a long debate about the need and place for remakes. This reviewer has always argued that even if the original was great, why not remake a story? If [...]
Mortal Kombat 2
Chalk it up to Covid brain or a severe lack of expectations, but this particular writer had enough splattery fun with the 2021 reboot of Mortal Kombat. A big-screen spectacle [...]
The Devil Wears Prada 2
If you order a daiquiri and then expect Dom Perignon, the joke is on you. At the same time, you can have standards regarding the quality of that daiquiri, setting [...]