Movie Reviews

  Bubble & Squeak follows Declan (Himesh Patel) and Delores (Sarah Goldberg), a recently married couple who are on their honeymoon in a country that has banned cabbage. They are stopped by customs, where a customs agent (Steven Yeun) informs them that they received word that an American couple is trying to smuggle cabbage into their country. Declan has no idea what the customs agent is talking about, and Delores’ pants are full of heads…

  Mstyslav Chrenov’s 2000 Meters to Andriivka, the follow-up to his 2022 Oscar-winning 20 Days in Mariopul, is another harrowing look at the war in Ukraine. Chrenov puts us on the frontlines of a brigade of Ukrainian soldiers trying to cross a 2000-meter forest to claim a Russian-occupied village. The opening fifteen minutes of 2000 Meters to Andriivka is like the opening Normandy scene from Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan except real. Chrenov straps cameras…

  The Ugly Stepsister takes place in the 19th century and follows Elvira (Lea Myren), whose mother (Ane Dahl Torp) marries the father of the beautiful Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss ). Following the death of her stepfather, Elvira’s mother finds out that her family, despite looking wealthy, has no money. The only option the family has is to marry into wealth, but with Agnes being so beautiful, Elvira is forced to take extreme measures…

  We’ve all had a bad day. A day where nothing seems to go right and as the day goes on, things just get worse and worse. One of the Them Days, the directorial debut of Lawrence Lamont, is a sweet and funny movie about just that. Dreux (Keke Palmer) is a promising employee at a local diner in Los Angeles. She’s Employee of the Month, she knows how to fix everything in the place,…

  A movie like Nickel Boys is hard to write about because I can’t think of any movie I have seen before that is anything it. It is a singular vision from director RaMell Ross and one of the great achievements of 2024. Adapted from Colson Whitehead’s book of the same title, Nickel Boys takes place in 1962 Jim Crow-era Florida where Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse) appears destined for great things. Having done great in…

  I first saw Brady Corbet’s historical epic The Brutalist back in October at the Chicago International Film Festival and I still haven’t been able to fully wrap my head around what I watched. It’s a stunning miracle of a film whose craft is only matched by its ambition. The Brutalist follows László Tóth (Adrien Brody) a Hungarian-born Jewish architect who survives the Holocaust and emigrates to the United States in 1947. He gets a…

  2024 has been a spectacular year for horror films. There have been a slew of horror films, from hits like Smile 2 and A Quiet Place: Day One to hidden gems like Late Night with the Devil and What You Wish For to surprises like The First Omen and Longlegs. So, it caught me by genuine surprise that the best horror movie of 2024 came at the very end of the year. Robert Egger’s Nosferatu is a stunning achievement that will send shivers down your spine…

  There’s an interesting idea to Babygirl, writer/director Helena Reijn’s latest erotic thriller, about the controlling being controlled. The film follows Romy (Nicole Kidman), a high-power CEO of a tech company who starts having an affair with a recently hired intern (Harris Dickinson) despite being married with children. Kidman’s Romy is always in control, whether with the happenings in her company or her personal life and while she is good at being in control and…

  Watching Emilia Pérez felt like I was watching a movie made by five different directors, all of whom wanted to make something different. It’s part gritty crime drama, part musical, part soap opera, part love story, part social message movie. The result is an audacious yet messy film. Rita (Zoe Saldaña) is an underappreciated lawyer who just won a big case despite it being against her moral conscience. Struggling to stay passionate about her…

  Gladiator II is an epic sequel to the 2000 Best Picture winner that features stunning direction, thrilling action, and one of the best performances of the year only for it to be bogged down by an underwhelming screenplay. Sixteen years after the death of Marcus Aurelius, Rome is a city of corruption. It is now run by two psychotic emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) and the city seems to be on…