If there’s one thing Godzilla: King of the Monsters makes abundantly clear, it’s that we’ve collectively warped our definition of the word “sequel” beyond the point of return. Studios have tried to get around the now-old-fashioned expectation that there be some sort of narrative thread connecting each entry in a given series via the notion […]

Having seen your share of formulaic biopics, you brace yourself when the first scene of Rocketman has Elton John (Taron Egerton) in full concert regalia (orange bird-man costume with devil horns) striding down a corridor in slow-motion while the music swells. “He’s on his way to take the stage,” you think with an internal sigh, “only […]

The Souvenir — British filmmaker Joanna Hogg’s haunting semi-autobiographical fourth feature — takes its title from a painting Hogg was taken to see by an older man she was dating in her early 20s, while she was attending film school in London. The Rococo painting is housed in The Wallace Collection, and it depicts a […]

The new Aladdin, directed by English film lad Guy Ritchie (Snatch), is unnecessary even by the standards of unnecessary remakes. It has the exact same plot as the 1992 animated classic, slowed down so it takes a half hour longer. The songs are the same but lack motion because they’re arranged as moderate hip-hop-inspired tracks […]

As horror premises go, “What if Superman were a sociopath?” is among the best I’ve heard lately. Brightburn, a scruffy, nasty, low-budget effort produced by Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn and written by his brothers Brian and Mark, executes it fairly well, feeding on parental fears about the unpredictability of child-rearing but leaving some […]

I don’t think that Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) — the lovable weird-girl protagonists of Booksmart — would begrudge me for giving Olivia Wilde’s equally lovable, weird debut feature a solid B+. Although I imagine they might have chased me down and tried to argue for those extra points before their enlightening adventure […]

The true story that Trial by Fire is based on, told by David Grann in a 2009 New Yorker article, is fascinating and suspenseful, full of twists that make you reexamine your assumptions, but the movie version — directed by bland social crusader Edward Zwick (The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond) from a screenplay by Geoffrey Fletcher […]

A lot of great art has been made about random but life-changing interactions between total strangers. Richard Linklater’s ’90s indie romance Before Sunrise is just one example of what can happen when you set two attractive young people on a collision course and follow them as they spent a full day walking and talking. (Does […]

John Wick’s first line of dialogue in John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum is an instruction to a taxi driver: “The New York Public Library.” How cool that an elite assassin is also a reader! Shortly after arriving at the library, he kills someone with a book. This is also cool. Look, we contain multitudes. […]