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The Mastermind
(2025)
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Rob Silverman Ascher
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The Mastermind is a slow-burn thriller, directed with a thief’s precision by Reichardt and anchored by an excellent performance by O’Connor.
Posted Oct 28, 2025
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A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE
(2025)
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Maxwell Rabb
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As the film enters its final stretch, Bigelow’s taut narrative loosens. Her return to familiar characters teases profound insight it never delivers.
Posted Oct 28, 2025
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Frankenstein
(2025)
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Maxwell Rabb
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Del Toro spent nearly 25 years dreaming up this world, and it shows, especially in Dan Laustsen’s gorgeous cinematography and Kate Hawley’s opulent costume design.
Posted Oct 28, 2025
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Dracula
(1979)
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Dave Kehr
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Frank Langella is the count, in a performance that reportedly differed from his Broadway interpretation: less campy, more glamorous. Still, Badham hasn’t made much of him. The character is presented well, but never developed.
Posted Oct 23, 2025
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From Beyond
(1986)
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Pat Graham
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The gross-out sliminess and sexual acting out are supposed to provide a purgative release, but all Gordon does is gawk at the excess for what seems like forever.
Posted Oct 20, 2025
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Highway Hypnosis
(1984)
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Cassandra Gillig
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Camp refuses the salaciousness of a Hollywood slasher, offering up something much more terrifying.
Posted Oct 18, 2025
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A Self-Induced Hallucination
(2018)
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Micco Caporale
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A Self-Induced Hallucination packs a swift, raw punch.
Posted Oct 18, 2025
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If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
(2025)
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Soham Gadre
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If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is a movie that feels written and engineered to deliver moments and clips rather than offer any depth on the topics purportedly at hand: the burden of motherhood, feelings of inadequacy, alienation, lopsided gender dynamics.
Posted Oct 16, 2025
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It Was Just an Accident
(2025)
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Maxwell Rabb
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The sheer madness that unspools is punctuated by jokes that cast a harsh light on the immense pressure placed on individuals under an oppressive regime.
Posted Oct 16, 2025
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The Secret Agent
(2025)
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Soham Gadre
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Filho crafts his central characters as fully fleshed out people, keeping their humanity grounded in their friendships, relationships, and fantasies in close quarters.
Posted Oct 16, 2025
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After the Hunt
(2025)
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Daniella Mazzio
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After the Hunt’s issue is that it is far too comfortably self-satisfied, resulting in something that ends up quite toothless.
Posted Oct 14, 2025
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Peacock
(2024)
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Kat Sachs
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A genuine sense of anxiety, more pronounced than that of Östlund’s films, pervades the story, delivering a stronger message as a result.
Posted Oct 14, 2025
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3.5/5
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Good Boy
(2025)
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Kyle Logan
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It’s pretty common stuff narratively, but the striking look and Leonberg’s ability to develop and sustain atmospheric suspense make Good Boy better than it needs to be. It also helps that Indy’s extremely cute and a very good boy.
Posted Oct 10, 2025
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2/5
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TRON: Ares
(2025)
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Kyle Logan
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There are some cool scenes within the Grid, and Nine Inch Nails’ music turns those scenes into great music videos stuck inside a mediocre if not outright bad movie.
Posted Oct 10, 2025
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The Smashing Machine
(2025)
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Maxwell Rabb
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The Smashing Machine succeeds because Johnson channels contradictions that feel deeply his own—his public armor and private fractures.
Posted Oct 03, 2025
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3/5
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Plainclothes
(2025)
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Kyle Logan
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Emmi’s willingness to play with form is welcome...and hopefully in future projects, he’s able to calibrate it better and write a more interesting script.
Posted Oct 03, 2025
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Shell
(2024)
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Noah Berlatsky
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Shell’s a decent movie. It’s just unfortunate that in release date, plot, and theme, it so closely parallels a better one.
Posted Oct 01, 2025
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Hard Times
(1975)
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Dave Kehr
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Hill’s thoughtful handling of the moral issue—survival versus friendship—and his subtle, evocative camerawork make this 1975 release a hundred times better than it should be.
Posted Sep 25, 2025
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Boogie Nights
(1997)
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Jonathan Rosenbaum
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Notwithstanding its occasional grotesque nods to postmodernist convention, this is highly entertaining Hollywood filmmaking, full of spark and vigor.
Posted Sep 23, 2025
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Riefenstahl
(2024)
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Kat Sachs
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To be frank, I would have appreciated more of a focus on Riefenstahl as a filmmaker, as in my mind her complicity isn’t something anyone needs to prove—it seems quite obvious.
Posted Sep 23, 2025
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Henry Fonda for President
(2024)
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Kat Sachs
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Formidable.
Posted Sep 23, 2025
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Peking Opera Blues
(1986)
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Kat Sachs
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The film is bright, colorful, and zany; any kind of plot is secondary to its freneticism, which moves the story along at a pace that often makes it difficult to follow
Posted Sep 18, 2025
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Blind Husbands
(1919)
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Kat Sachs
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There are moments of cinematographic sublimity that showcase von Stroheim’s preternatural gift as a filmmaker.
Posted Sep 18, 2025
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Caught Stealing
(2025)
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Kat Sachs
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It was darker than I had anticipated from the trailers but still more fun than other Aronofsky films, and there’s a cat in it.
Posted Sep 18, 2025
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Riefenstahl
(2024)
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Dmitry Samarov
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Andres Veiel paints a complex and contradictory portrait.
Posted Sep 18, 2025
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3.5/5
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A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
(2025)
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Kyle Logan
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Whether the big swings work or not...it’s a welcome surprise to see a colorful, midbudget studio film that’s willing to take them.
Posted Sep 18, 2025
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Night of the Living Dead
(1990)
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Jonathan Rosenbaum
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The film can’t simply be discounted as a skim job on the original; Romero’s dark social commentary, which grew in impact over his entire Dead trilogy, is still very much present here, even if it no longer has the same bite and urgency
Posted Sep 17, 2025
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To Be or Not to Be
(1942)
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Kat Sachs
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The humor is so dark, but as in any Lubitsch film, it’s delivered still so elegantly.
Posted Sep 12, 2025
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The History of Sound
(2025)
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Maxwell Rabb
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The History of Sound is too tonally restrained to deliver the heart-wrenching love story it aspires to. A meandering narrative further undercuts its romantic potential, too assured in its soft tone to fully unravel its characters’ pain.
Posted Sep 12, 2025
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The Conjuring: Last Rites
(2025)
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Maxwell Rabb
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It might not conjure something phenomenal, but, for longtime fans, it’s a mostly fitting curtain call for a franchise that always believed in its own ghosts.
Posted Sep 12, 2025
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The Long Walk
(2025)
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Noah Berlatsky
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I appreciate the movie’s desire to take a stand and the way in which it shows how difficult it is to find a path to resistance and heroism when our narratives of resistance and heroism are so coopted.
Posted Sep 12, 2025
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Caught Stealing
(2025)
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Maxwell Rabb
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It’s Aronofsky near his best.
Posted Sep 05, 2025
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Suspended Time
(2024)
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Daniella Mazzio
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Suspended Time isn’t particularly novel, and it’s a touch too thin to successfully stretch into 105 minutes, but you could do for a worse late August hang than these couples.
Posted Sep 05, 2025
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The Roses
(2025)
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Maxwell Rabb
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The pacing switches too suddenly between vigor and slackness, leaving the film without the propulsion its absurd premise demands, causing the conflict to drag on.
Posted Sep 05, 2025
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Vice Is Broke
(2024)
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Maxwell Rabb
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What passes for inquiry here is closer to rough research. Vice Is Broke is momentarily compelling but hollow in the end, much like Vice when the hype inevitably died down.
Posted Sep 05, 2025
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The Thursday Murder Club
(2025)
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Maxwell Rabb
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There is some shock value, but the film goes too far in evading the truth; it nearly forgets to establish an emotional tether between the audience and its suspects.
Posted Sep 05, 2025
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Gosford Park
(2001)
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Kat Sachs
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I could have watched several more hours of it, which is something I could essentially achieve by watching Downton Abbey, but I feel much more engaged in Altman’s care.
Posted Aug 28, 2025
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The Naked Gun
(2025)
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Kat Sachs
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It certainly felt good to laugh and bask in some absurdity.
Posted Aug 28, 2025
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The Parallax View
(1974)
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Kat Sachs
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If you’re not sucked in by the The Parallax View’s absurd-but-apparently-true conspiracy, then you will be by Gordon Willis’s hauntingly atmospheric cinematography.
Posted Aug 28, 2025
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Arabesque
(1966)
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Kat Sachs
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Arabesque has going for it a lot of neat trick shots that give a sense of Donen’s background as a lauded choreographer.
Posted Aug 28, 2025
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3/5
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Honey Don't!
(2025)
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Kyle Logan
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The slight twinge of too-cruel violence and a somewhat disappointing finale can’t take away from the film’s general success as a fast-paced crime comedy that’s full of laugh-out-loud scenes.
Posted Aug 28, 2025
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Lurker
(2025)
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Maxwell Rabb
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Where Lurker could have pushed the genre to new heights, it never quite hits full throttle.
Posted Aug 25, 2025
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Americana
(2025)
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Kyle Logan
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Americana delivers as an enjoyable neo-western with some things to say and requisite genre thrills, but it’s unlikely to be remembered.
Posted Aug 25, 2025
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Splitsville
(2025)
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Maxwell Rabb
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Splitsville is a hell of a ride.
Posted Aug 25, 2025
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Taxi to the Toilet
(1980)
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Micco Caporale
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Using creative pacing and structure, Taxi Zum Klo captures the failed promise of both a bourgeois heteronormative existence and a decadent self-involved pseudo–free love
Posted Aug 25, 2025
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Boys Go to Jupiter
(2024)
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Micco Caporale
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It could be more adventurous, but what Boys Go to Juper lacks in teeth it makes up for with heart—and that’s just fine for a cultural moment when everything outside the movies has audiences going fangs out.
Posted Aug 25, 2025
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Freakier Friday
(2025)
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Kat Sachs
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I went in with no expectations and came out pleasantly surprised.
Posted Aug 15, 2025
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The Gauntlet
(1977)
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Kat Sachs
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Here one finds Eastwood interrogating the institution just as much as he’s seemingly upholding it by being committed to his onetime ideals of law enforcement.
Posted Aug 15, 2025
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Highest 2 Lowest
(2025)
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Maxwell Rabb
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Lee may miss a few beats and allow too many haphazard monologues, but he keeps the whole film irresistibly watchable.
Posted Aug 15, 2025
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3/5
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Weapons
(2025)
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Kyle Logan
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Weapons spends most of its runtime in the same funny, scary, mysterious, and thematically-legible-without-being-too-overt sweet spot as...Barbarian. Unfortunately, its final section drags the whole movie down by insisting upon audience hand-holding.
Posted Aug 14, 2025
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