MULTIPLEXITY: REFLECTIONS ON "MY SUMMER OF SUMMER MOVIES"
In which I look back on my preposterous (and predictably failed) attempt to write about every movie that opened this summer.
In which I look back on my preposterous (and predictably failed) attempt to write about every movie that opened this summer.
Denzel Washington eats, prays, loves, maims, mutilates, and murders in Anton Fuqua's The Equalizer 3 (2023), a dumb and dour action thriller that is both unpleasant to watch and bad for the world.
Zoë Kravitz's directorial debut is a stylish but shallow provocation with almost nothing to say about the issues it pretends to explore.
Like a competent cover-band, Fede Alvarez's legacy sequel evokes memories of earlier magic, but has none of its own to offer.
My choices for who will win, who should win, and who must not be allowed to win at the 96th Annual Academy Awards.
Godard said all you need for a movie is a girl and a gun, but did he ever really consider the cinematic possibilities of a sloth with a sword? The minds behind the horror-comedy Slotherhouse did, and we thank them for it.
As Golda Meir, Helen Mirren gives a showy but shallow impersonation, in a disappointing historical biopic more emotional than illuminating.
How do you continue churning out angry White man wish-fulfillment action fantasies in your 70s? If you're Liam Neeson, you make a forgettable bomb-in-a-car thriller that doesn't actually require you to move around too much.
Though skillfully made, Neill Blomkamp's Gran Turismo squanders too much of what makes this true gamer-to-racer story unique, ending up a decent but overly familiar underdog sports movie.
Lonely senior citizens make an alien friend in Jules, Marc Turtletaub's slight, tonally mismatched, extremely odd little misfire of a film.
A qualified success, the first live-action superhero movie with a Latino lead is deliberately derivative, surprisingly charming, and stealthily political.
Funnier and more competently constructed than most mainstream human comedies, Strays is a raunchy delight in the dog days of summer.
Equal parts fascination and frustration, Ira Sachs' exploration of a destructive love-triangle provides a lot of heat but precious little illumination.
D. Smith's intensely intimate documentary Kokomo City, about Black trans sex workers, shines with humor, wisdom, and uncompromised humanity.
Though far from perfect, The Last Voyage of the Demeter is a good old-fashioned, wonderfully immersive, atmospheric monster movie with a genuine taste for blood.
Friends, I've been looking forward to Meg 2: The Trench all summer, which makes this janky, joyless, shamelessly derivative dead shark of a movie 2023's biggest disappointment by far.
That the new TMNT movie is getting positive reviews must be attributed to expectations that have been seriously lowered by every other big-screen version. To the uninitiated, this one looks great, but it doesn't have much else going for it.
With a smart screenplay and a brilliant central performance from newcomer Sophie Wilde, the Philippou Brothers' debut feature Talk to Me is the best, most genuinely disturbing horror movie of the year.
Perhaps Disney accountants can use a crystal ball to find out where $150 million went, because no film that stinks this bad should cost so much.
I've fallen dangerously behind on my 2023 movie review marathon, so I'm cheating and offering quick takes on four films I haven't had time to write about in full.
Men will literally destroy the world instead of going to therapy. That's the lesson of Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, a small and narrowly focused psychological study dressed up like a big historical epic.
Greta Gerwig's Barbie turns out to be a far more interesting film than we had any right to expect, but not necessarily the film Barbie and her fans deserved.
Mstyslav Chernov's almost unbearably brutal documentary is vital reporting, but it is also an essential work of art, universal in its application and beautiful in its fury.
Some very good actresses board the bus for The Miracle Club, but crash headfirst into a tonal pile-up where the darkest subplots meet the silliest paddywhackery.
Hubert Davis's documentary Black Ice (2022) is a moving indictment of widespread racism in hockey, but sometimes feels like it's skating on the surface of a much larger problem.
Despite strong central performances, Vadim Perelman's Holocaust story Persian Lessons (2020) feels not just implausible, but badly misjudged.
The latest installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise is just ridiculously good: thrilling, fun, funny, and (most surprisingly) boasting an actual beating heart.
The lesson of The Lesson—a disappointingly dumb "smart" thriller—is that everybody involved should have studied harder.
First-time director Patrick Wilson sees a red door and decides to paint it a dull, forgettable grey, in a pedestrian sequel to the already lackluster Insidious franchise.
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