Some things just go together: spaghetti and meatballs, ham and cheese, beans and rice, peanut butter and… freshly caught fish? You have to hand it to Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz: The pair of writer-directors have made a hell of a debut feature using a surprising combination of ingredients,...

With her new film, Hustlers, writer-director Lorene Scafaria (The Meddler, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World) wants to take you back to a simpler time in American history. The year was 2007, a new show called Keeping Up with the Kardashians had just begun to air, Usher ruled the radio,...

1999 is considered one of the strongest years of cinema in living memory. There will no doubt be countless articles in 2019 marking the 20th anniversaries of that year’s greatest hits and examining their impact and legacy. But this column isn’t about those movies. This column is about the...

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 convincing performances from his not-very-good actors....

The 2019 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) felt unusually heavy with films concerning religion and its followers. Of the more than 30 films I screened, nearly a third grappled with what it means to be a person of faith or live in a world where religious institutions structure daily life....

In the year since it was unleashed on the public, two schools of thought have formed around Crazy Rich Asians. Hailed for its inclusion of Asian and Asian-American actors in an industry where said actors are often sidelined, the Golden Globe-nominated romantic-comedy has been recognized as a...

I have a complicated relationship with the Telluride Film Festival. It's a world-class fest, usually playing some of the year's best movies, many of them world premieres introduced in person by their directors and stars, who are always humble and gracious. The venues, despite being commandeered...

Before I get into grading It: Chapter Two, I’ll admit to being a bit baffled by the runaway success (commercially, but also critically) of its predecessor. At this point, 2017’s It (not to be confused with the 1990 miniseries adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 horror novel) has become the...

(Screened at the Telluride Film Festival; release date TBA.) 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...

(Screened at the Telluride Film Festival; theatrical release scheduled for Nov. 15.) 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...

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 (called Relive at its Sundance premiere) starts with a...

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 unnamed Mexican metropolis from which thousands of...

When the forces of the universe collide and you have the good fortune to approach the right piece of art at the right age, something magical happens. For some of us, that means getting handed a well-worn copy of The Clash’s self-titled album from a cool older cousin; for others, it means...

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 any other type of character who has emotions or a...

A movie about grown-ups playing hide and seek is out now, hot on the heels of last year's movies about people people playing tag and truth or dare. Naturally, one wonders: What other childhood games could be turned into movies? I took a trip down memory lane and came up with these beloved pastimes...