Features
Displaying 121 - 130 of 1499
Wednesday, Apr. 12, 2023
Review: Director Chris McKay's "Renfield"
"Renfield" is not Nicolas Cage's first blush with a vampire. In 1988's "Vampire's Kiss," he played a New York literary agent who thought he was an immortal bloodsucker. His bug-eyed performance was essentially the birth of the over-the-top, kabuki-inflected mythology of Cage. Years later, it would...
Wednesday, Apr. 5, 2023
Review: Director Ben Affleck's "Air"
The new movie " Air " is technically about a shoe. There is nothing especially extraordinary about this shoe. As the Q-like Nike designer Peter Moore (Matthew Maher) explains, the last significant change to footwear was made some 600 years ago when the decision was made to differentiate the right...
Wednesday, Apr. 5, 2023
Review: "The Super Mario Bros. Movie"
April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. But it is also, if I check the clock, Mario Time. "The Super Mario Bros. Movie," with its vistas of primary colors, is here to brighten our dreary springs, T.S. Eliot...
Friday, Mar. 31, 2023
Review: Director Jeremy Garelick's "Murder Mystery 2"
You would have a hard time defending the limp plotting, the bland action-adventure set pieces or the Agatha Christie-light whodunit twists of the first "Murder Mystery." And, yet, it was kind of good. "Murder Mystery," one of Netflix's most-streamed films, was chock full of exotic settings and...
Thursday, Mar. 30, 2023
Review: Director Raine Allen-Miller's "Rye Lane"
Yas and Dom meet-cute in the best possible way in the new rom-com "Rye Lane." They're paired up at a karaoke bar by chance and simply slay, leaving the crowd demanding more and chanting their names. The new couple recognize "an immediate, deep animal attraction." No, not really. That's just the...
Wednesday, Mar. 29, 2023
Review: Writer-Director A.V. Rockwell's "A Thousand and One"
There is a dread that hovers over " A Thousand and One," writer-director A.V. Rockwell's remarkably vivid and tender debut feature about a mother and son in New York in the 1990s. The film does not play out like a mystery or a thriller — it's about the mundanities and trials of life with a kid in a...
Tuesday, Mar. 28, 2023
Review: "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves"
"You're not a lot of fun, are you," notes barbarian Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) to brave fighter Xenk (Regé-Jean Page) in the new "Dungeons & Dragons" film, making two jokes at once. The first is that Xenk, a paladin (or holy knight) in "D&D" lingo, is everything BUT fun — gorgeous, noble,...
Thursday, Mar. 23, 2023
Review: Director Stephen Frears' "The Lost King"
Richard III didn't need a horse for his kingdom. He just needed Philippa Langley. Langley, a single mother and amateur historian living in Edinburgh, Scotland, became increasingly obsessed with the late English monarch, long portrayed as one of the great villains of history. In the supposedly...
Thursday, Mar. 23, 2023
Review: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's "Tori and Lokita"
It's one of the great ironies of cinema that many — not all, but many — of the most seemingly arthouse filmmakers make some of the most approachable films. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are imposing names in cinema. The Belgian brothers have twice won the Palme d'Or. But you would be hard pressed to...
Wednesday, Mar. 22, 2023
Review: Director Zach Braff's "A Good Person"
All filmmakers should be so lucky to have Florence Pugh in their movies. She so consistently delivers the best version of whatever she's handed — whether good, mediocre or downright preposterous — that you may even start to wonder if the quality of the film around her really matters in the end. It...