At the end of Cherry, a title card pops up reading, “A Russo Brothers Movie.” The word choice there is a fitting summation of the directors’ entertainment-first ethos. Their relentlessly larger-than-life inclusions–red tinting, swooping cameras, massive text superimpositions–occasionally serve a...
In ways both good and bad, Andrey Konchalovskiy’s Sin isn’t strictly a biopic of Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo (played here by Alberto Testone). Like most good biographical films, it doesn’t try to cram too much of the man’s life into...
Kevin Macdonald’s The Mauritanian opens in cinemas this weekend. None of us should be going to movie theaters any time soon but, while watching a screener copy in the safety of my living room, I found myself wondering if that’s...
During the recent, virtual Sundance Film Festival, there premiered a surprising number of movies that, despite having been conceived of and largely produced before the COVID-19 pandemic, had eerie similarities to what our lives have become. Add to that list...
Reteaming with cinematographer Sean McElwee, Chad Hartigan gives us, in his new movie Little Fish, a muted, overcast, crepuscular vision of the Pacific Northwest. It is, admittedly, not an uncommon look but not only is it beautifully pulled off in...
Early in Sam Levinson’s Malcolm & Marie–a movie that makes a case for self-indulgence not necessarily being a detriment to quality–Malcolm (John David Washington), a film director who’s just returned home with his girlfriend, Marie (Zendaya), after the triumphant premiere...
Right at the beginning of Sam Hobkinson’s Misha and the Wolves, we hear the voice of a radio personality (one of the first people to report on the story the documentary will unpack), say, “Sometimes a story is so astonishing,...
After nearly a year of video-on-demand premieres–and coming almost at the end of an entirely virtual film festival–the larger-than-life, widescreen photography (by Sean Bobbitt) and the abundant close-ups in Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah made me long for...
It should come as no surprise that any serious-minded film about the pornography industry is also going to be a good Los Angeles movie. Most of the time, when a filmmaker sets out to depict a city, they understandably focus...
To answer the question on the minds of all the irony hounds, who speak in memes and love nothing, yes, Sion Sono’s Prisoners of the Ghostland is that kind of Nicolas Cage movie. With died black hair, he wields an...
