Screen
Surreally ambitious
The year’s best films thus far — writer/director Ari Aster’s Hereditary and writer/director Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You — have two major similarities:...
Itty bitty witty committee
Good news for amnesiacs: Ant-Man and the Wasp is a near carbon copy of the flimsy-fun first installment. Much like the school careers of...
A beautiful invitation
If ever there was a word to describe Fred Rogers — the host of the long-running PBS show, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood — it would...
‘Madness in the middle’
If you’ve seen a hundred Westerns, then you’ve seen it a hundred times: a mysterious figure rides into town looking for someone. With guns...
I really don’t cartel do u?
If Fox News made Ambien, the opening sequence of Sicario: Day of the Soldado would be its signature hallucinatory nightmare. A classic “You got...
Thou art a symbol and a sign
Wanting for my happily-ever-after, I lowered my defenses, forgetting the first lesson I was taught: That I was brought into this world to be...
Just as I remember
This is not based on a true story; this is a true story.” So proclaims the title cards that open American Animals — a...
Suparental sympathies
Over the years, The Incredibles has, somewhat cloyingly, become the thinking person’s answer to “best superhero movie.” Writer/director Brad Bird’s original, stylishly sly Fantastic...
The eternal charm of the go-getter: Part one
Known as “the third genius,” Harold Lloyd did not have the same background in vaudeville as Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton; yet, he ended...
Hell is your family
Toni Collette spends nearly the entirety of Hereditary playing an unopposed game of Twister using only her facial features. The film is understandably being...
Twenty feet from stardom, a million miles from sanity
Like most love stories, this one begins at the movies. London, 1971: A young actor goes to see the latest release, A Clockwork Orange,...
When I paint my masterpiece
Reverend Toller (Ethan Hawke, in one of his best performances) is having a crisis of faith. The parish pastor of New York’s 250-year-old First...
