Movie Reviews
Minari
"Minari" is a happy smile of a movie about a Korean-American family (mom, dad, young boy and girl) moving to Arkansas in the 1980s to try farming. There's potential for a lot of major drama -- the boy has a heart murmur; grandma comes to live with th...
Uncle Frank
We know that Alan Ball, writer of "American Beauty" and creator of "Six Feet Under," is interested in repressed homosexuality and death. Both are front and center in Ball's "Uncle Frank," set in North Carolina in the 1970s with Paul Bettany as the ti...
Possessor
"Possessor" is set in a world where it is possible to transfer your consciousness into someone else's body and take over that person -- "possess" them, if you will. This is achieved via medical implants in the head, and the person being possessed usu...
The Glorias
"The Glorias" is a biopic of Gloria Steinem and the women's movement up to the present day, with four actresses playing her at different ages: little girl, tween, young woman (she's Alicia Vikander there), and adult (now she's Julianne Moore). The di...
Kajillionaire
I always thought it was remarkable that I liked Miranda July's previous films, "Me and You and Everyone We Know" and "The Future," considering her vibe of hippie New Age whimsicality is usually a turnoff for me. Well, my luck ran out here, as I found...
Boys State (documentary)
Boys State is where budding, 17-year-old political nerds go for a week to form mock governments, hold elections, impeach one another, and so forth. (They have it for girls, too, and I bet it's VERY DIFFERENT.) All 50 states have the program; the docu...
Spree
"Spree" is a title with a contrived double meaning. The movie is about someone who goes on a killing spree, but guess what? He's also a driver for a rideshare service CALLED Spree (I suppose Uber and Lyft weren't interested in a promotional deal). Wh...
Wendy
Benh Zeitlin's followup to "Beasts of the Southern Wild" -- "Wendy," a reimagining of the girl from "Peter Pan" -- has the same dreamy, lyrical vibe as its predecessor, but with a distinct difference: it's terrible.
Our Wendy (Devin France) is a l...
Bad Boys for Life
It's been nearly 25 years since Miami police detectives Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) first teamed up to shoot bad guys and destroy property in "Bad Boys." How long ago was 1995? So long ago that back then, Martin Lawr...
Troop Zero
In 1977, NASA scientists put out the word that they’d be recording greetings from people from around the world and sending them (the recordings) into space to welcome any potential aliens who happened by. That announcement is the jumping-off point f...
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Coming on the heels of last year's documentary "Won't You Be My Neighbor?," the unabashedly adoring Mister Rogers story "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" puts us at risk of deifying the Presbyterian-minister-turned-TV-host. Frankly, I can't think...
Ford v Ferrari
There are no legal skirmishes in "Ford v Ferrari." The battles between the automakers take place in boardrooms, racetracks, and other places where men have car-measuring contests. Directed by James Mangold, who brought similar confidence to "Walk the...
Honey Boy
The nice thing about being a wealthy actor is that instead of going to therapy you can write a semi-autobiographical movie and work out your issues on the big screen. "Honey Boy," written by Shia LaBeouf, stars The Beef as a fictionalized version of ...
Motherless Brooklyn
Edward Norton, whose first directorial effort ("Keeping the Faith") was 19 years ago, chose an odd story to adapt and direct for his follow-up: "Motherless Brooklyn," a 1999 novel by Jonathan Lethem about a Tourette's-afflicted P.I. (played by Norton...
Countdown
In "Countdown," the mildly stupid teen horror flick about a phone app that tells you how long you have to live, it's not the app that kills you. The app doesn't have any control over your lifespan, either, which is to say, the act of asking has no ef...
Greener Grass
••• “Greener Grass” is an absurdist suburban satire written and directed by Upright Citizens Brigade alumnae Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe, populated with like-minded sketch-and-improv workhorses (including “SNL’s” Beck Bennett), everyone clearly h...
Zombieland: Double Tap
Another one of this week's unnecessary sequels is "Zombieland: Double Tap," a hit-or-miss follow-up to the perfectly good 2009 comedy that brings back the original cast of post-zombie-apocalypse survivors just to put them through the same paces as la...
The Lighthouse
You'd be forgiven for thinking "The Lighthouse" is a comedy when the first two things that happen are Robert Pattinson bumping his head and swearing and Willem Dafoe farting. But while those and a handful of other humorous moments and outlandish even...
Jojo Rabbit
The attention-grabbing pitch for "Jojo Rabbit" — a little German boy near the end of World War II has an imaginary friend, and it’s Hitler — is ultimately secondary in importance to the film’s more serious, sentimental themes. That the film, adapted ...
Tell Me Who I Am (documentary)
"Tell Me Who I Am" belongs to the category of documentaries that are better enjoyed the less you know ahead of time. Netflix is a great home for these, as the 24/7 availability and near-zero cost make it easy to give it a look when a friend texts yo...
Gemini Man
You're familiar with the type of movie where a best-of-the-best secret agent is betrayed by his own government and must go on the run. "Gemini Man" is a very basic one of those with one twist: The assassin sent to kill our secret agent is his clone. ...
The Addams Family (2019)
The animated reboot of "The Addams Family," set in the present day, has everyone's favorite spooky Goth family (or second-favorite if you were more of a "Munsters" person) in conflict with a new neighborhood that has popped up nearby called Assimilat...
Parasite (Korean)
Income inequality has seldom been funnier than in "Parasite," a scathing satire-farce-tragedy-horror from South Korea's Bong Joon-ho ("Snowpiercer," "The Host") in which a family of scrappy strivers weasel their way into the employ of a rich family a...
Joker
Being the origin story of the title villain, "Joker" is technically a Batman prequel and technically a comic book movie, but director and co-writer Todd Phillips ("The Hangover," "Old School") doesn't want you to think of it as those things. He's goi...
In the Shadow of the Moon
"In the Shadow of the Moon" is a reasonably OK science-fiction police procedural that begins with a flash-forward to 2024, where Philadelphia is in ashy ruins and the U.S. flag has been reconfigured to have five big stars instead of 50 little ones. ...
Sister Aimee
According to the onscreen titles, "Sister Aimee" is "5 1/2 percent truth," the rest amusing, subversive, educated guesswork. What's definitely true is that in 1926, a charismatic evangelist, faith-healer, and showwoman named Aimee Semple McPherson (p...
The Death of Dick Long
Set in Alabama and focused on two idiots who panic after making a mistake, "The Death of Dick Long" laughs at its characters' follies but ultimately shows the kind of affection for them and their habitat that can only come from someone who grew up th...
The Golden Glove (German)
"The Golden Glove" is the remarkably unpleasant true story of a German serial killer in the 1970s, told with matter-of-fact, steely-eyed brutality by Turkish-German filmmaker Fatih Akin. Jonas Dassler is uglied up real good to play Fritz Honda, a hun...
Judy
Considering how good America is at producing icons worthy of biopic treatment, it's ironic how bad we are at making biopics. The usual formula is for someone to give a career-best performance as some tortured artist or other but for the movie itself ...
Downton Abbey
I stopped watching "Downton Abbey" near the beginning of season 4, when a character was raped and I realized the show was just a regular ol' soap opera now. The "Downton Abbey" movie wasn't made for me, then (it's for super-fans), but I didn't have m...
Rambo: Last Blood
The Rambo franchise is about a U.S. veteran who keeps finding himself in situations where he has no choice but to kill dozens of foreigners. He's always just minding his own business, not killing anybody, when someone comes along and recruits him for...
Synchronic
(Screened at Fantastic Fest; release TBA)
Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead have been floating around the edges of indie sci-fi/horror for the last few years, writing and directing thoughtful under-the-radar films like "Spring" (2015) and "The Endl...
4×4 (Spanish)
(Screened at Fantastic Fest; release TBA)
A fully loaded SUV, parked on a Buenos Aires street, is the setting for "4x4," a "Saw"-inspired take on income inequality from Argentine director Mariano Cohn. A petty thief named Ciro (Peter Lanzani) brea...
One Cut of the Dead (Japanese)
•••You can tell pretty quickly that something is up with "One Cut of the Dead." It starts in an old warehouse serving as the set of an amateurish, low-budget zombie movie, where the director, Higurashi (Takayuki Hamatsu), is having trouble getting c...
Hustlers
Jennifer Lopez, who turned 50 years old six weeks before "Hustlers" was released, enters the film on a stripper pole, flawlessly executing (without a body double) an astonishingly sexy routine before dismounting, writhing in a sea of dollar bills, an...
It: Chapter Two
If the first half of the two-movie adaptation of Stephen King's "It" was more funhouse thrills than outright terror, "It: Chapter Two" leans even harder into that choice, yielding an epic-length but novella-deep exercise in mild, jokey horror. The se...
Don’t Let Go
David Oyelowo, the soulful actor who played Martin Luther King Jr. in "Selma" a few years ago, deserves mainstream success if he wants it, and tossing off a few crowd-pleasing potboilers might seem like the way to get it. But while "Don't Let Go" (ca...
Angel Has Fallen
Gerard Butler is not good at anything, and it's time we stopped trying to make him be. He uses an American accent in almost every movie, yet is no better at it than he was 20 years ago. He is not convincing as a romantic lead, a villain, a hero, or a...
Tigers Are Not Afraid (Spanish)
••• A tough, beautiful urban fairy tale by Mexican writer-director Issa López, "Tigers Are Not Afraid" is a perfect example of how genre films can help us engage with real-world crises without being overwhelmed or discouraged by them. It’s set in an...
Ready or Not
It would be easy enough to make a horror movie out of the children's game hide-and-seek, just as it was no problem making one out of truth or dare last year. Making it into a good movie, though, takes more effort, and I'm glad the filmmaking collecti...
Good Boys
The characters in "Good Boys" were born the year "Superbad" came out (this very weekend in 2007), so they probably don't realize they're living in a remake of it. The girls in "Booksmart" didn't know, either. No one can say why "Superbad" is the 2000...
47 Meters Down: Uncaged
Not having seen "47 Meters Down: Uncaged" is not a hindrance to understanding the sequel -- mistakenly titled "47 Meters Down: Uncaged" instead of "48 Meters Down" -- because the films have nothing to do with each other apart from sharing a director ...
The Angry Birds Movie 2
I'll tell you what, the only thing a critic enjoys more than a good movie is a good movie that's a surprise. "The Angry Birds Movie" (2016) was a miserable affair reverse-engineered to explain why the birds in the popular smartphone game were slingsh...
The Kitchen
"The Kitchen" is an exceptionally formulaic but not unenjoyable crime drama with Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, and Elisabeth Moss as the wives of Irish mobsters in 1978 New York who take over -- and improve upon -- their husbands' business when ...
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
Though Alvin Schwartz's books were published between 1981 and 1991 and had timeless settings, the movie version of "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" is set in 1968 -- at Halloween, specifically, which means it's also a few days before the election ...
Socrates (Portuguese)
"Socrates," a low-key Brazilian vérité drama directed by Alexandre Moratto, was made by a crew of low-income São Paulo teens as part of a UNICEF program to foster social inclusion through filmmaking. It was a fitting project for Moratto to engage the...
The Art of Racing in the Rain
Life is a lot like racing cars, as you know if you read Garth Stein's dependably sappy novel "The Art of Racing in the Rain." The movie version, directed by Simon Curtis ("Goodbye Christopher Robin") from Mark Bomback's faithfully adapted screenplay,...
Dora and the Lost City of Gold
"Dora the Explorer," the educational animated TV show for preschoolers, gets a live-action movie adaptation that is, if not educational, at least harmless enough kiddie fare. Entitled "Dora and the Lost City of Gold," it's aged up a bit, aimed at chi...
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
"Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw," a rare two-ampersand film, gives two of the supporting tough guys from the eight "Fast & Furious" movies their own blithe spinoff that keeps with the franchise's aesthetic by disregarding the laws ...
Airplane Mode
YouTube star Logan Paul assembled so many fellow YouTube stars to make "Airplane Mode" that it would be genuinely impressive if they were anyone but YouTube stars. Like, if you got this many famous actors or singers or athletes together? That would b...
Share
••• Mandy, the high school basketball player at the center of "Share," starts the film by waking up on her front lawn -- not an auspicious way to start the day (or a movie). Played by excellent newcomer Rhianne Barreto, Mandy is hungover, and her me...
Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood
There was cause for concern when Quentin Tarantino announced he was making a movie involving the Manson Family murders. It seemed likely, given QT's usual approach, that the result would be tacky and exploitative, maybe even turn a horrific (and, his...
The Lion King (2019)
The idea behind this remake of "The Lion King" was to tell the same story but with real animals. That being impractical, however, they had to use computer-generated animals that merely look real and don't do anything that real animals aren't physical...
Purge of Kingdoms
"Purge of Kingdoms" announces itself as "a pointless parody" of "Game of Thrones," which reminds me of a truism: Admitting you're terrible doesn't make you less terrible. Directed incompetently by Ara Paiaya from a dismal, randy script by J.J. McDowe...
Crawl
Alexandre Aja, director of grisly but mediocre fare like "High Tension" and the remake of "The Hills Have Eyes," has delivered a B-movie worthy of the label (and the grade) in "Crawl," which combines man's natural fear of alligators, extreme weather,...
The Art of Self-Defense
Jesse Eisenberg plays to his strengths in "The Art of Self-Defense," a deadpan comedy about a weak, timid, ineffectual dweeb named Casey (that's Eisenberg, obviously) who flirts with becoming an anger-fueled alpha male after getting mugged and beaten...
Stuber
"Stuber" is a familiar product -- a violent action comedy about a civilian who gets dragged into police work -- with a twist that's more depressing than was probably intended. Kumail Nanjiani plays the nicknamed title character, beta-male Uber driver...
Midsommar
If books could always be accurately judged by their covers, the bespectacled, unassuming Ari Aster would be an accountant or an I.T. guy, not the fever-brained lunatic behind the deeply unsettling horror movie "Hereditary" -- my favorite film of 2018...
Spider-Man: Far from Home
"It's easy to fool people when they're already fooling themselves," says the villain in "Spider-Man: Far from Home," the first superhero movie to address life in the era of deepfake videos and daily governmental gaslighting. But to be fair, it's not ...
Ophelia
Daisy Ridley stars as Hamlet's crazy ex-girlfriend -- or maybe she wasn't crazy after all? -- in "Ophelia," a sumptuous retelling of the story from her point of view, with a decidedly more feminist bent than the Bard saw fit to give it. Based on Lisa...
Yesterday
"Yesterday," a song about regret over the way things turned out, is perfect for the movie "Yesterday," which should have been better. Written by romantic-comedy veteran Richard Curtis ("Notting Hill," "Love Actually," "About Time") and directed by th...
Annabelle Comes Home
"Annabelle Comes Home" is part of the "Conjuring" franchise, but you don't need to have seen any of those movies (which also include "The Nun" and "The Curse of La Llorona") to understand what's going on here, which is that there's a creepy doll that...
Bit
The narration at the beginning and end of "Bit" (and it's never a good sign when a movie only has narration at the beginning and end) suggests something more satiric and self-aware than what we actually get, which is more like a distaff version of "T...
Toy Story 4
"Toy Story 3" was such a perfect culmination to the series that any "Toy Story 4" is going to be met with wariness. The "Toy Story 4" we got does nothing to allay those concerns -- it is, as expected, an unnecessary addition, though I do like where t...
Child’s Play (2019)
The remake of "Child's Play" was positioned to be one of the more logical reboots of recent years, until they did a bad job of it. The concept of a murderous doll (Cabbage Patch size, not Barbie) makes more sense in 2019, when toys that talk, move, l...
Anna
Noted French pervert Luc Besson ("The Fifth Element," "Lucy") is back with another story of a badass woman who happens to be everything a horny screenwriter could want her to be -- avidly bisexual, eager to sleep with men she works with, doesn't talk...
Men in Black: International
It takes considerable effort to render a pair as charismatic as Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson boring, but the makers of "Men in Black: International" are up to the task. This completely forgettable "next generation" sequel brings in new MIB agen...
Shaft (2019)
The new "Shaft," starring Jessie T. Usher as anxious FBI data analyst John Shaft, is a direct sequel to the 2000 "Shaft," which starred Samuel L. Jackson as badass police detective John Shaft, who was the nephew of Richard Roundtree's original John S...
The Secret Life of Pets 2
Coming on the heels of its shaky predecessor, "The Secret Life of Pets 2" is a mild, playful surprise with the confidence of a long-running franchise. This week's other new movie, "Dark Phoenix," feels like a TV show in a bad way, but "TSLOP2" feels ...
Dark Phoenix
After a while I started getting offended at how much "Dark Phoenix" assumed I remembered about the previous Teenage X-Men movies. Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), whose ill-defined powers include telekinesis and ESP, is paired up with laser-eyed Cyclops (T...
The Last Black Man in San Francisco
"The Last Black Man in San Francisco" sounds like a play on a science-fiction concept, but this gorgeously filmed semi-autobiographical story is grounded in all the realities of the modern, changing world. It stars and was written by SF native Jimmie...
Late Night
There are two things happening simultaneously for Katherine Newbury (Emma Thompson), the only female host in late night, in "Late Night," a mild satire written by Mindy Kaling. One is that she's being dinged for never having had a single woman on her...
Rocketman
Having seen your share of formulaic biopics, you brace yourself when the first scene of "Rocketman" has Elton John (Taron Egerton) in full concert regalia (orange bird-man costume with devil horns) striding down a corridor in slow-motion while the mu...
Godzilla: King of the Monsters
"Godzilla: King of the Monsters" is a sequel to 2014's "Godzilla," though the only returning characters are the title abomination and a few ancillary figures played by Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, and David Strathairn, the latter two evidently only a...
Ma
While the category of "horror" is broad enough to include "Ma" (especially the last 20 minutes of it), you'll be disappointed if you're expecting anything scary or suspenseful. It's more of a psychological drama and a mystery with some horror element...
Starfish
An apocalyptic event happens so subtly in "Starfish" that you almost don't notice it. The reasons for that are probably more practical than artistic -- it costs money to show widespread devastation -- but it adds to the intrigue of this melancholy sc...
Aladdin (2019)
The new "Aladdin," directed by English film lad Guy Ritchie ("Snatch"), is unnecessary even by the standards of unnecessary remakes. It has the exact same plot as the 1992 animated classic, slowed down so it takes a half hour longer. The songs are th...
Booksmart
I'm sure the people who made "Booksmart" don't want it to be shorthanded into "'Superbad' for girls," but I'm equally sure that their hopes are in vain. If you don't want to be compared to "Superbad," don't have the same plot and tone as "Superbad." ...
Brightburn
As horror premises go, "What if Superman were a sociopath?" is among the best I've heard lately. "Brightburn," a scruffy, nasty, low-budget effort produced by "Guardians of the Galaxy" director James Gunn and written by his brothers Brian and Mark, e...
The Sun Is Also a Star
If Richard Linklater made a junior version of "Before Sunrise," it might look like "The Sun Is Also a Star," in which two teens meet and have only one day in which to fall in love before they go their separate ways. Based on a novel by Nicola Yoon (w...
John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum
John Wick's first line of dialogue in "John Wick: Chapter 3 -- Parabellum" is an instruction to a taxi driver: "The New York Public Library." How cool that an elite assassin is also a reader! Shortly after arriving at the library, he kills someone wi...
Trial by Fire
The true story that "Trial by Fire" is based on, told by David Grann in a 2009 New Yorker article, is fascinating and suspenseful, full of twists that make you reexamine your assumptions, but the movie version -- directed by bland social crusader Edw...
A Dog’s Journey
Stay with me here. "A Dog's Journey" is a sequel to "A Dog's Purpose" (2017), both based on novels by W. Bruce Cameron. They're similar to "A Dog's Way Home" (from earlier this year) but aren't connected to it in any way except that "A Dog's Way Home...
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
••• It was inevitable that a former teen star from the Disney Channel would eventually play a serial killer, if not actually become one. Zac Efron, whose breakout performance in "High School Musical" was more than 13 years ago, is good as Ted Bundy ...
Amazing Grace (documentary)
"Amazing Grace," Aretha Franklin's 1972 double-album of gospel songs, was the top-selling record of her career and the bestselling live gospel album of all time. (There might have been more live gospel albums than you realize.) It was recorded over t...
Pokemon: Detective Pikachu
As neither a child of the '90s, a current child, or a person who has ever played Pokemon, I am not the target audience for "Pokemon: Detective Pikachu," a kid-focused, live-action PG adventure that assumes viewers are already familiar with Pokemon lo...
Poms
I appreciate it when movies are short, especially bad movies like "Poms." But "Poms" would have been better if it had taken more time to establish the characters and their motivations -- if it had actually told a story, in other words, like a real mo...
The Hustle
The story and premise of "The Hustle" are so elegant in their simplicity that it's no surprise this film has already been made twice: first as "Bedtime Story" (1964), with Marlon Brando and David Niven, then as "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" (1988), with ...
Wine Country
••• The premise behind "Wine Country" is that "SNL" alumnae Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Rachel Dratch, and Ana Gasteyer, and "SNL" writers Paula Pell and Emily Spivey, wanted to make a movie where the six of them could hang out. (Don't worry, there's...
Long Shot
"Long Shot" has the skeleton of a romantic comedy, but the flesh on those bones has a lot of flavors: political satire, odd-couple comedy, celebrity culture, and '90 nostalgia, to name a few. The screenwriters are Dan Sterling, who wrote Seth Rogen a...
The Intruder
The only way to enjoy "The Intruder," a mediocre domestic thriller with a plot that's entirely predictable (and totally spelled out in the trailer) is to pretend it has more subtext than it does. Viewed in a certain way, for example, it could be seen...
UglyDolls
The main purpose of the animated "UglyDolls" film is to make viewers aware that there is a line of plush toys called UglyDolls that they can buy. In that sense, the movie is a rousing success. No one can watch this movie and come away not knowing tha...
Avengers: Endgame
(Note: I'm going out of my way not to "spoil" anything here, including things that happen within the first 20-30 minutes that would normally be fair game in a review. You're welcome, nerds.)
When we last saw the Avengers, they were part of the luc...
I Trapped the Devil
Full disclosure: One of the producers of this film, Scott Weinberg, is a longtime friend and colleague, and writer-director Josh Lobo is a pal I've socialized with at film festivals. Honestly, I think this association makes me more critical of the fi...
Family
"Family," a sunny and likable small-scale comedy from first-time filmmaker Laura Steinel, belongs to the subcategory of movies in which bad role models and hopeless kids are paired up so they can learn from each other: "Bad Santa," "Bad Teacher," "Ro...
The Curse of La Llorona
Like most movies, "The Curse of La Llorona" is part of the extended "Conjuring" universe. The connection is negligible -- the older priest in this one had an encounter with the evil doll in "The Conjuring" prequel "Annabelle" -- but it's enough to sl...
Hagazussa (German)
Etymology time! “Hagazussa” (“hedge sitter”), an Old High German word that gave us witchy terms like “hag” and “hex,” refers to the old women who would sit near the hedges that separated cultivated land from wild forests, gathering herbs and such whi...
Little
Here's an amusing coincidence. "Little," which is a reversal of the Tom Hanks classic "Big," was written by Tina Gordon Chism, who also wrote "What Men Want," a reversal of "What Women Want." Chism's niche, apparently, is mediocre rewrites of fantasy...
Missing Link
"Missing Link" is Laika's fifth gorgeously detailed work of stop-motion animation and the fourth to leave me kind of cold. Only the studio's debut, "Coraline," had the intended impact; "ParaNorman," "The Boxtrolls," and "Kubo and the Two Strings" wer...
Wild Nights with Emily
There are two things I know about Emily Dickinson: She was a reclusive spinster, and many of her poems can be sung to the tune of "Yellow Rose of Texas." The second thing, which is definitely true, is addressed in "Wild Nights with Emily," Madeleine ...
