Review by Andrew Swafford
Starfish is not really a horror film. It’s something else – and that something is kind of beautiful.
Read MoreReview by Andrew Swafford
Starfish is not really a horror film. It’s something else – and that something is kind of beautiful.
Read MoreReview by Nadine Smith
The first thing we see Moondog do is save a stray cat. Opening with that old screenwriting adage— if you want us to like your character, write a scene in which they save a cat — might make you think we’re supposed to be endeared to the titular sea-side ass of Harmony Korine’s latest film. But Moondog isn’t like the rest of us Earthlings; he transcended everyone else’s opinion of him long ago.
Read MoreReview by Nathan Smith
For better or worse, Dragged Across Concrete is neither the totally hateful and bigoted movie you’ve been warned about nor the formalist masterpiece you’ve been promised.
Read MoreReview by Courtney Anderson
I imagine that Jordan Peele’s brain is kind of a chaotic place, with millions of ideas, societal critiques, and rational thoughts flying around at rapid speed. I also imagine that every nightmare, moment of fear or spike of anxiety Peele’s ever had is running around freely, too.
Read MoreReview by Courtney Anderson
This movie really just needed tighter writing. It doesn’t have any super glaring issues, and it’s certainly not the first Marvel movie to have problems with exposition and character development – nor is it the worst of the offenders.
Read MoreA conversation between Andrew Swafford and Mike Thorn
It seems like most people who have reviewed the film have some sort of passionate stance about black metal, which, in almost every case, has elicited anger.
Read MoreReview by Nadine Smith
Though it’s a few degrees below the Wachowskis, Alita is the kind of genuinely cinematic, good-natured blockbuster filmmaking that’s all too scarce in Disney’s gated community.
Read MoreReview by Jessica Carr
When I saw The Breaker Upperers, I was immediately caught up in the chemistry of writer-director-star duo Jackie van Beek and Madeleine Sami.
Read MoreReview by Logan Kenny
Regardless of whether it is or not – I certainly hope it isn’t – this feels like the last film of Eastwood’s career. It feels like a goodbye. The film doesn’t attempt to justify him for his selfishness, nor redeem him for his failures and criminal decisions over the runtime, but rather it shows the beauty of someone trying to be better before it’s too late.
Read MoreReview by Logan Kenny
Zemeckis is more interested in coating his actors’ faces in hideous doll CGI and referencing his past works in a disorientating cluster of explosions and overpriced imagery than he is interested in reckoning with the tragedy of his protagonist.
Read MoreReview by Diana Rogers
Sometimes the women don't look fabulous while they're going about the business of being complicated and fascinating. Sometimes they're middle aged and overweight, un-corseted, gout-ridden and wearing eye makeup that makes them look like a badger. Some of the most celebrated male roles are those that revel in their characters' flaws, their actual human-ness. It shouldn't be so uncommon for women to feature in similar parts, yet somehow it still feels revolutionary, because it happens far too infrequently.
Read MoreReview by Reid Ramsey
Upon reflection, what first appeared to be a self-congratulatory commentary on art reveals itself to simply be a five dollar gore-fest; and the movie is all the better for this reason.
Read MoreReview by Nadine Smith
M. Night Shyamalan has given us many twists over the past two decades. But there’s another twist waiting in the wings. M. Night Shyamalan got your attention and your dollars with Split, and instead of fulfilling your expectations or building a new cinematic universe, he’s used it to make one of the strangest studio movies of the last decade, a superhero movie that is everything superhero movies aren’t supposed to be.
Read MoreReview by Logan Kenny
This movie should have been something more, something uplifting and beautiful, but it is not, and all we can do is speak out about its problems together, to not stay silent.
Read MoreReview by Courtney Anderson
Everything about If Beale Street Could Talk shows that Barry Jenkins’ ultimate goal is to show how much he loves these characters and the Black people who inspired them. And he picked the perfect story to show that love.
Read MoreReview by Rilwan Balogun
At the close of this movie, you don’t leave warm and fuzzy because they got him out of jail. But you sit with feeling uncomfortable and sad. This is the point.
Read MoreReview by Logan Kenny
Is The House That Jack Built the cinematic form of the manipulation that follows abuse? A work with the pretense of self-examination that is actually just another reminder of the pain that many women have went through? Or is it a genuine apology, a work of intense self loathing, an abuser longing with existential suffering and a desire for death because he can’t achieve the catharsis in this life anymore?
Read MoreReview by Zach Dennis
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse shows not only the endless visual prospects of the comic-book genre, but also the natural inclusion of diversity and representation that felt less like a business plot and more of a reminder that the hero’s identity is fluid because anyone can be behind the mask.
Read MoreReview by Andrew Swafford
Knight seems to be bringing Laika’s humanistic sensibility to a franchise heretofore so concerned with militaristic hardware and mechanics.
Read MoreReview by Courtney Anderson
To me, watching Widows felt like I was watching the outline of a potentially fantastic script.
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