All Reviews

A Transcendental Take on Shakespeare Shakespeare has been a well of material for artists and filmmakers, not just through adapting his works, but his life as well.  Shakespeare in Love  (1998) was fun theatre-kid fanfiction, while  All Is True  (2018) was a deep cut for Shakespearean nerds. With her novel  Hamnet , Maggie O’Farrell chose to explore the most “un-Shakespearean” aspects of the bard’s life, choosing instead his wife Anne Hathaway (not the modern actress) as the p

A Bleak but Compelling Portrait of Motherhood Motherhood has been the surprising common theme for many 2025 releases, from  Die My Love  (2025) to  Hamnet  (2025),  Bring Her Back  (2025),  The Perfect Neighbor  (2025), and  Young Mothers  (2025). The latest to join this exploration of often unnamed, dark thoughts of motherhood is the searing  If I Had Legs I’d Kick You  (2025).   If I Had Legs I’d Kick You  follows Linda (Rose Byrne), a therapist and mother of a young daught

Jim Jarmusch turns the remake into a quiet family ritual Jim Jarmusch is as unhurried an artist as can be, both in his method of filmmaking as in his style. This has made him stand out as the rest of the world accelerates and shortening attention spans demand crammed and manic narrative rhythms. Jarmusch’s films of the last decade have been playing with cinematic trends, with Jarmusch taking a pop sensation and changing it into his own counterprogrammed and contemplative take

Paul Feig’s thriller goes wildly, watchably off the rails Despite having cut his teeth making some of the best comedy of the last few decades with The Office (2005-2013), Parks and Recreation (2009-2015), Bridesmaids (2011), and Spy (2015), director Paul Feig is insisting on a career change. Since 2018 he’s been trying to break into the thriller genre with A Simple Favor (2018) and its sequel Another Simple Favor (2025). He now has delivered his biggest hit in the genre with

A glossy tribute that mistakes affection for insight Tribute bands are affectionate nostalgia-bait for music fans, wishing to experience an older group in person. One of the most famous tribute bands known at Lightning & Thunder focused on Neil Simon and performed from the late 1980s to the mid 2000s. The group got a documentary Song Sung Blue (2008) and now have a biopic with the same title.   Song Sung Blue (2025) follows musical impersonators Mike (Hugh Jackman) and Claire

Nia DaCosta Brings Moral Weight and Visual Restraint to the Zombie Franchise Many unplanned trilogies fizzle out by their third entry, as the unexpected success of a first film forces sequels into existence, often resulting in an incongruous and artificial trilogy arc. We’ve seen this occur with  Star Wars ,  Creed , and  Unbreakable , but that doesn’t seem to be the case with the recently rebooted  28 Days  franchise. Just last summer,  28 Years Later  (2025) revitalized the

A visually staggering saga running out of fire James Cameron has now devoted close to two decades to his  Avatar  films, which have revolutionized blockbuster cinema: the first  Avatar  (2009) through its groundbreaking visual effects and use of 3D, and the second,  Avatar: The Way of Water (2022), through its pioneering work with notoriously difficult water effects. Both films proved such enormous successes that they now rank as the first and third highest-grossing films of

A harrowing portrait of innocence, bureaucracy, and the human cost of war The recent war in Gaza was bound to spark art attempting to grapple with the horrors and devastating loss it has caused. One of the most potent stories to emerge from the unimaginable civilian death toll was that of Hind Rajab, a six-year-old girl whose call to first responders after an Israeli military attack was heard around the world. Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania has chosen to dramatize this

A somber Knives Out trades clever twists for faith and fatigue After creating a new charismatic detective to join the ranks of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes with the Southern-drawling Benoit Blanc, the unlikely franchise of  Knives Out  has now reached its third film. After the electric first film,  Knives Out (2019), the follow-up  Glass Onion  (2022) proved more convoluted and satirical; this is somewhat overcorrected in the latest installment,  Wake Up Dead Man: A Kni

A compelling yet cautious portrait of the men behind recent history’s atrocities The Nuremberg trials of Nazis were a monumental moment in the collective digestion of the horrors perpetrated in World War II, and set the stage for a new international world order, which, while shaky, remains to this day. The events of those trials have been dramatized in the past as courtroom dramas, most famously in the Spencer Tracy and Burt Lancaster film  Judgment at Nuremberg  (1961), or m

A haunting study of how homes remember—and how families try to forget The poetic question of whether spaces have memory is an intriguing one, and one that spiritually accrues many added layers regarding the trauma or unsettled nature that certain objects or locations retain. Yet from an emotional standpoint, spaces—especially a home—can become symbols of the tangled web of relationships, families, and inner demons that one fights within them. These spaces can also carry liter

Bigger and busier, this sequel can’t recapture the original’s spark After the return of Bob Iger as Disney CEO, a pivot was made to make less quantity of content for the streamer Disney +,  which had partially doomed his chosen successor Bob Chapek, and instead play it safe with sequels to beloved franchises. Thus, a greenlight was given for Moana 2 (2024), Toy Story 5 (2026), and Frozen 3 (2027). Among the anointed sequels to previous hits is Zootopia 2 (2025), which just hi