Daughter-Father Comedy Boundaries Won’t Let Vera Farmiga Catch a Break
… It’s nice that writer/director Shana Feste’s family comic drama Boundaries shows an adult woman reluctant to let her vagabond dad back into her life — for good reason
… It’s nice that writer/director Shana Feste’s family comic drama Boundaries shows an adult woman reluctant to let her vagabond dad back into her life — for good reason
This ultra-violent crime thriller, satirizing some of Americans’ most despicable, imperialist impulses, somehow seems as though it is from a quieter, more decent time — and that’s depressing
… Young soldiers Bartle (Ehrenreich) and Murphy (Tye Sheridan) face the unceremonious cruelties of deployment; through flashbacks and time shifts, we know that only Bartle returns and that he may be somehow responsible for Murphy being classified MIA
… While John Wick is all action, no talk, Artemis is the polar opposite, Pearce stretching out the will-they-won’t-they (kill each other) tension as long as possible, until every violent criminal is trapped in this hotel
The horror of Hereditary lays not just in scary images but in creeping sense that free will is a joke, and bad luck can be as inescapable as a family curse
In both the archives and in Novack’s footage, Talley appears so fully himself in every one of his garishly fascinating caftans that it’s difficult not to admire him or the endless knowledge of history and design (specifically Russian) he can spout from on cue
… The moment the camera pans over to blind pianist Sofia (played by Natalie Dormer, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Byrne), it’s obvious she’s the coiffed blond protagonist of this espionage tale
This story revolves around four successful women in a monthly book club who start reading E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, which inspires them to rekindle their own love lives
Because one pivotal Get Out close-up displays Gabriel’s astounding emotional range in just three seconds, the actor’s face has become memorialized in GIF-dom
Starring Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams, Disobedience is an adaptation of Naomi Alderman’s novel of the same name, about a tightly knit Orthodox Jewish community and the prodigal daughter who returns to poke holes in its way of life
Told through the unique lens of this Latinx family, Vida is a statement on upward mobility and the privilege of being able to outgrow your home
… Bad Samaritan — with its title sounding very Grisham — tells the story of a low-level thief who breaks into a fancy-schmancy house and discovers a woman being held captive in a plastic-lined, camera-surveilled room
… This is an intimate portrait of the artist in recent years as she returns to Jamaica, the country of her birth and childhood, for a family reunion
Equal parts spooky and cheeky, this film nails its black humor and finds a bizarre but satisfying conclusion to manage all the loose ends
Lost in Space is nearly Steven Spielberg airy, telling the story of a super-smart family selected to populate a Utopian space colony but who get lost somewhere along the way
Think of Flower as a little like Sofia Coppola’s teen-thief satire The Bling Ring with the realism and consequences to bad behavior of Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen
The film suggests Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, in the trust the director places in its child character to tell her own story without the adults butting in too much
The film tells the story of a terrorized woman in a mental hospital who’s trying to convince the staff and patients that she shouldn’t be there and is being held against her will
The film sends the simultaneous messages that it’s futile to coddle children but also that it’s OK to feel the icky stuff that you feel, because even your weaknesses can be transformed to strengths
Kersey is the everyman, and Roth’s movie, whether he likes it or not, is the good-guy-with-a-gun propaganda the NRA is just lapping up straight out of the toilet
The film gives only the most paltry consideration to geopolitics, to relations between the U.S. and Russia or America’s own corrupt operations
Potter isn’t what you’d call subtle, but she also knows not to overstay her welcome, and this pithy comedy is a masterclass in all that a filmmaker can squeeze from the most basic theatrical concept …