In 2019, Joel and Ethan Coen, the award-winning filmmaking brothers behind such films as Raising Arizona, Fargo, and The Big Lebowski, announced that they were splitting up because Ethan Coen was “giving movies a rest” and wanted to focus on stage plays and did not want to work on Joel’s next project, The Tragedy of Macbeth. Ethan has now returned to the directors’ chair with Drive-Away Dolls, a zany lesbian road-trip movie that felt…
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Amir Naderi’s 1984 film The Runner is the latest film to enter the Criterion Collection. Inspired by director Amir Naderi’s own boyhood, The Runner is lit from within by Madjid Niroumand’s electrifying performance as a young orphan fending for himself on the streets of a port city, determined to rise above his circumstances—working odd jobs, passing time with friends, learning to read—and running, always running, toward the future. Water, fire, the human body in motion: in hypnotic images…
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The 2024 Academy Awards are here! Despite hardly ever agreeing with who wins at the Oscars and the constant controversy surrounding the nominees and the show in general, I always get excited about Oscar night. Like most years, some categories seemed locked up based on precursors and awards-season wins. This year feels more predictable than most, but there are still a few battles that I am excited to see and I’m sure there will be…
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The 2024 Academy Awards are here, which means the 2023 movie year is almost officially over. This year’s Oscars finds Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer leading the way in nominations with thirteen, followed by Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things with eleven nominations, and Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon with ten nominations, respectively. This year’s group of Best Picture nominees is one of the best we have seen in quite some time. Six of the ten films nominated…
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I normally don’t pay attention to the press tours of movies, where the filmmakers and the actors are interviewed by dozens upon dozens of media and press outlets to promote their latest movie, but it was impossible to escape the press tour for Madame Web, particularly the clips involving the film’s star Dakota Johnson. Johnson’s dry, off-beat brand of humor was in full force in these interviews, as she talked about how “chaotic” shooting…
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Movies don’t get much bigger than Denis Villenuve’s Dune: Part Two, the action-packed and surprisingly emotional continuation of 2021’s Dune: Part One. Dune: Part Two continues the story of Paul Atreidis (Timothée Chalamet) and his journey to get revenge on House Harkonnen for killing his father and overtaking House Atreidis on the planet of Arrakis. Part Two picks up right where Part One ended with Paul and his mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) having joined…
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In my review last year of Sophia Coppola’s Priscilla, I wrote briefly about movies with similar subjects coming out within a year of each other, like Armageddon and Deep Impact, Wyatt Earp and Tombstone, Elvis and Priscilla, and the list goes on. We’ve just done that again in the forms of Reality and Winner, two films that look at NSA whistleblower Reality Winner (her actual name) who leaked government documents in 2017 showing Russia’s…
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Watching Argylle, the latest action film from director Matthew Vaugh, was an astounding experience because I can’t think of a movie where I could feel and see it getting worse with every passing minute. What starts off as a fun spy romance soon balloons into a film that is so focused on attempting to trick the audience and amaze us with action sequences (it fails on both counts) that it loses everything good about…
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Will Ferrell is one of the great comedic actors of the 2000s, starring in iconic comedies like Old School, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy, and The Other Guys. Will & Harper finds Ferrell in a new light as he is at the center of director Josh Greenbaum’s documentary as Ferrell and his best friend of thirty years Harper Steele take a cross-country road trip together following Steele coming out to Ferrell and transgender….
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Chris Nash’s In a Violent Nature has a great concept behind it: a slasher movie from the point of view of the killer. I love this idea on paper and thought In a Violent Nature was going to be another subversion of the slasher genre and a shot to the arm of one of my favorite subgenres of horror. The idea of the film works well for most of the film, but the surprisingly…
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