Riccardo Scamarcio and Ruby Rose costar beside Keanu Reeves in director Chad Stahelski’s John Wick: Chapter 2
Review by Alison Swafford
Can we talk about violence in the John Wick series? Seriously, can we? Only three years old, this franchise has already become a strange sacred cow for cinephiles who dig genre fiction. Yes, these movies are balletic and immaculately captured on film, but they’re also fascinating--if imperfect--from just about every other angle.
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Michael Sheen, Jennifer Lawrence, and Chris Pratt star in director Morten Tyldum's Passengers
Review by Alison Swafford
I still like the originality of Passengers overall, but the tone of the film always stays on this side of “safe,” gutting the film of its potential to be a gutsy, interesting, original studio genre effort.
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Ryan Gosling, along with Emma Stone, stars in director Damien Chazelle's La La Land
Review by Alison Swafford
La La Land is more ambitious than Whiplash in every conceivable way: it is longer, it has a more complicated plot, it doubles the number of artist-protagonists, it upgrades musical performance to musical theater, and it poses significantly more ethical dilemmas about art to wrestle with. I’m going to ignore the film’s obvious cinematic qualities in order to focus on the ethical side—because I’m not sure Chazelle has much to say this time around.
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Review by Lydia Creech
Godzilla films have always been best when looking politics right in the face, and Anno upholds and updates that tradition here.
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Amy Adams stars in Nocturnal Animals
Review by Ben Shull
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once noted that “the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” That very question is the crux of this film. Evil is ugly, yet a blackened heart begets it again and again and again.
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Alex Hippert stars as "Little" in director Barry Jenkins's Moonlight
Personal Essay by Courtney Anderson
I have to be honest and say that I don’t believe in total “universality” of films, especially not Moonlight. Chiron’s narrative is one that is so often ignored that the idea that “everyone” can find themselves in him confuses me. But I know Chiron.
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Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard in Allied
Review by Nadine Smith
What makes Allied so fascinating is not just its deliberate and obvious employment of artifice in form, but its engagement with constructed surfaces as its very subject. Allied is all about the artifice not just of espionage, but of acting (and filmmaking) itself: the film is stuffed with numerous rehearsals, auditions, and bad accents that draw attention to its own exterior. Only the love is real.
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Katherine Waterston and Eddie Redmayne star in Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them
Review by Zach Dennis
Fantastic Beasts succeeds in its base goals, but never transfixes us like its predecessors did. It seems to suffer from a similar issue as superhero movies in that it forgets to construct an engaging story amidst the wonder happening around it.
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Auli’i Cravalho stars as Moana in the newest Disney animated feature
Review by John McAmis
Themes of family, independence, friendship, and self-discovery are ripe in Moana. These are Disney themes, but again, they seem new this time around. Fresh. Exciting. Surprising.
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Hailee Steinfeld stars in director Kelly Fremon's Edge of Seventeen
Review by Alison Swafford
On screen, clever teenage banter is funny; in real life, it’s equal parts awkward and annoying. Edge of Seventeen plays it both ways, smartly understanding the fact that the dialogue its genre has become known for contains a stilted sadness; it is symptomatic of the largest teenage ailment: egocentrism.
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Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner star in director Denis Villeneuve's Arrival
Review by Alison Swafford
Arrival fulfills one of our most fundamental desires as moviegoers: the desire to be amazed.
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Benedict Cumberbatch stars in Doctor Strange
Review by Zach Dennis
Doctor Strange treats many of the previously seen symptoms of the studio’s movies with an unmatched energy, but it also comes up just as hollow. The visuals are enticing, the characters are entertaining, but in the end, it never adds up to much and my experience flat-lined on the operating table.
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Min-hee Kim and Kim Tae-ri play a Japanese heiress and a pickpocket hired as her handmaiden in Director Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden
Review / Personal Essay by Paige Taylor
Warning: Review contains spoilers
This was the sapphic delight I've wished for for so long.
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Kirsten Johnson makes her own role as cinematographer the focus of her new documentary Cameraperson
Review by John McAmis
As a budding filmmaker who’s dealt with making documentaries around personal events and familial relations, I was immediately captivated by Kirsten Johnson’s approach to her cinematic memoir.
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Hwang Jung-min plays a suave shaman in director Na Hon-jin's The Wailing
Review by Alison Swafford
The Wailing is a demonic epic that is equal parts Zen and Brimstone. It grabbed me and has not let go.
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O-Ei and her father in Miss Hokusai
Review by Zach Dennis
Miss Hokusai has beautiful elements, and a lead character that is engaging and interesting, but I’m not sure it painted a full picture.
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Shia LeBeouf and Sasha Lane star in director Andrea Arnold's American Honey
Review by Jessica Carr
For Star (Sasha Lane), the dream is to live in a trailer somewhere with lots of trees and room for lots of kids, and I’m so thankful to see a film that shows me what her life is like.
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Isabelle Huppert stars in director Paul Verhoeven's Elle
Review by Lydia Creech
It’s… complicated, which sounds reductive. It’s off-putting, which sounds reactionary. It’s “also a comedy,” according to star Isebelle Huppert. Thank God for Huppert. Her performance as Michèle is truly incredible (one of the best of the year) and gives the audience something to hold on to.
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Narges Rashidi stars in director Babak Avari's Under the Shadow
Review by Alison Swafford
Flannery O’Connor once said that “while the [American] South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.” The same, I imagine, could be said about Iran and Islamic Fundamentalism, and visualizing that haunting is where Under the Shadow movie really succeeds as a piece of art, if not a perfect genre picture.
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Makis Papdimitriou, Panos Koronis, and many other middle-aged Greek men star in director Athina Rachel Tsangari's Chevalier
Review by John McAmis
Themes and stigmas of masculinity run rampant in Chevalier, and for good reason. With outstanding direction by Tsangari, the film exists to call attention to the toxic ways in which men determine the “manliness” of other men. The contest itself has its roots in this question, though by the end of the film, the activities on the yacht run amok and the question is no longer Who will win? but What will be the breaking point for each contestant?
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