You know how some costume epics can be such a bloody bore? Not The Favourite. It’s a bawdy, brilliant triumph, directed by Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos with all the artistic reach and renegade deviltry he brought to Dogtooth (2009), The Lobster (2015) and The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017). …
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Charmian “Charlie” Ross (Florence Pugh), the title character of The Little Drummer Girl, is an actress who is recruited to be a spy and possibly a terrorist. But what AMC’s adaptation of the 1983 John Le Carré novel presupposes is… maybe all three of those are the same thing? Little …
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Police shootings of unarmed black men are such a tragic part of everyday life that it’s no wonder movies feel the need to offer their take on the subject. Yet the moral outrage expressed so potently in such films as Fruitvale Station and Monsters and Men rarely results in impactful …
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The premise: It’s the end of the world. Haven’t we seen that before? We have, most recently in A Quiet Place. But in I Think We’re Alone Now, there are only two people left on the entire planet. And they’re played by Peter Dinklage and Elle Fanning. So that’s promising. …
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Part peerless Horror City time capsule and part urban-paranoia Op-Ed, the original 1974 Death Wish dropped its pacifist everyguy into Middle America’s nightmare version of rotten-Big-Apple New York – muggers, rapists and minorities, oh my! – then asked audiences: What would you do if your loved ones were attacked by …
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Don’t mess with Melissa Leo. As Novitiate‘s Reverend Mother Marie St. Claire, the boss lady who calls the shots at the fictional Tennessee convent where this religious drama is based, the actress gives the kind of bravura performance that not only sparks Oscar talk but richly deserves it. She finds …
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Willem Dafoe should be on top of Oscar’s Best Supporting Actor list for his stellar work in The Florida Project, a film that’s as hilarious and heartbreaking as it is unclassifiable. The actor’s soul-deep performance as Bobby, a motel manager working the low-rent fringes of Orlando’s theme-park “paradise,” is alert …
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Darren Aronofsky doesn’t make movies to help you feel better about yourself and the world. He’s a cinematic virtuoso (Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan) on a mission to probe and provoke. That makes him a rare bird in a multiplex of comic-book escapism and cheap formula. Be warned: Mother! …
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