
THE RULES OF THE GAME (1939)
As my Independent Study in World Cinema continues, I dive deep into Jean Renoir's tragicomic critique of French society on the eve of the Second World War.
As my Independent Study in World Cinema continues, I dive deep into Jean Renoir's tragicomic critique of French society on the eve of the Second World War.
We're finishing our "Christmas-Adjacent" marathon with Daryl Duke's unjustly forgotten crime thriller.
In this week's edition of my blog/newsletter, I'm offering quick takes on Promising Young Woman, Pretend It's a City, WandaVision, Locked Down, and a bunch of other stuff I was watching when I should have been writing.
New clothes, new pianos, new ventures, new relationships, new governments: On a relatively quiet episode, everyone in DEADWOOD is grappling with the possibility of change.
In which—brazenly, and despite a poor track record at this sort of thing—I announce what I'm planning to review, and other changes coming in the new year.
In this week's blog/newsletter, I share a few thoughts on the white supremacist attack on Washington D.C., as well as a few links to the thoughts of much smarter people than I.
After many years, I'm taking up my Deadwood reviews right where I left off, with an episode that asks whether this brutal place could possibly be a place where family can thrive.
This week's blog post/newsletter includes quick thoughts on Sylvie's Love, Doctor Who, and Dickinson, as well as some thoughts on the difference between making New Year's Resolutions and implementing them.
In the first of a new weekly blog series (and ersatz newsletter), I discuss what I've been watching, and writing about, and thinking about, during 2020's "Holiday Taint."
The Unenthusiastic Critic watches the perfect movie for Christmas 2020: Alfonso Cuarón's dystopian (but strangely hopeful) nativity story.
My long neglected Independent Study in World Cinema resumes with Jean Renoir's unfailingly humane masterpiece.
The Unenthusiastic Critic is looking for the holiday spirit in Norman Jewison's Christmas-adjacent romantic comedy.
This #Noirvember, we're serving a cookie full of arsenic, as The Unenthusiastic Critic enjoys her first viewing of Alexander Mackendrick's cynical cinematic masterpiece.
In 1990, Kevin Costner's epic western was widely hailed as major progress in Hollywood's representation of indigenous people. But what will The Unenthusiastic Critic make of it 30 years later?
There's no place like home, as The Unenthusiastic Critic's 2020 Halloween Movie Marathon concludes with Bryan Bertino's harrowing home-invasion thriller.
What's scarier than family? So we're talking about Ari Aster's breakthrough horror movie this week, as The Unenthusiastic Critic's Halloween movie marathon continues.
We're headed back to Manderley as The Unenthusiastic Critic's 2020 Halloween Movie Marathon continues with Hitchcock's Oscar-winning suspense classic.
The Unenthusiastic Critic's Halloween Movie Marathon continues with Guillermo del Toro's classic wartime ghost story.
The Unenthusiastic Critic's 2020 Halloween Movie Marathon gets underway with a viewing of a creepy cult classic.
Questions of identity, duality, and transformation abound in a disturbing and surprisingly complicated episode of Lovecraft Country.
This week we're revisiting Carl Franklin's sorely under-appreciated neo-noir, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this month.
With its weakest hour yet, Lovecraft Country turns in a story that is at turns dull, derivative, and disturbing (but not in a good way).
Jurnee Smollett gives a stunning performance in the strongest, most emotionally compelling episode of Lovecraft Country so far.
This week we're getting Ghibli with it, as we sit down for The Unenthusiastic Critic's first viewing of Hayao Miyazaki's weird and wonderful animated classic.
In its second episode, Lovecraft Country tackles racism as a tool of capitalism, and asks the important question: Whose birthright is America, really?
Taking a genre-fiction approach to serious subjects, Lovecraft Country promises to be a thrilling guided tour through the racist horrors of America.
Great films are rarely made from great books, and Ciro Guerra's film of J.M. Coetzee's novel underlines the perils—and even the pointlessness—of many literary adaptations.
This week, we're watching a dynamic duo of movies: the film that started Hollywood's love affair with superheroes, and the film that almost ended it.
Marjane Satrapi tries—but not, ultimately, hard enough—to build something interesting around the standard biopic formula.