Review: Disney’s Haunted Mansion Gives the Beloved Theme Park Ride a Welcome New Narrative
When I was a kid, one of the first pieces of vinyl I ever owned was an audio version of Disney’s The Haunted Mansion, containing all the music, voices and […]
Review: Ellie Kemper and Cast Don’t Get Much to Work With in Mediocre Rom-Com Happiness for Beginners
Much like with her debut film, The Volunteer, writer/director Vicky Wright chooses to place a woman in an apathetic fog at the center of her sophomore effort, Happiness for Beginners […]
Review: They Cloned Tyrone Pops Visually, and as a Sharp Parody of Conspiracy Movies
There’s just enough crazy going on in this directing debut from Juel Taylor (writer of Creed II, Shooting Stars, and of course, Space Jam: A New Legacy) to make it […]
Review: Family Secrets and Childhood Anxiety Don’t Add Much to Second-Rate Horror Film Cobweb
Adding to the long list of family dramas couched in the framework of a horror movie, Cobweb (the feature filmmaking debut of Samuel Bodin) tells the story of 8-year-old Peter […]
Review: Earth Mama Follows a Young Mother Determined to Do Right by Her Kids, Even When It’s Hard
Although many of the details are different, writer/director Savanah Leaf’s directorial feature debut portrait of Black motherhood, Earth Mama, feels like it’s cut from the same layered cloth as A.V. Rockwell’s […]
Review: New Documentary Joke Man Chronicles Comic Jackie Martling from Stand-Up to The Howard Stern Show
As someone who has been listening on and off to various incarnations of The Howard Stern Show since Stern was a local DJ in Washington, D.C. in the very early […]
Review: Christopher Nolan Gets Personal, Emotional and Political in a Sprawling, Engrossing Oppenheimer
Although it sometimes feels like we’re watching a history textbook or a lengthy biography, writer/director Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a sprawling, visually engrossing cinematic lesson in technology, innovation, American hubris, […]
Review: Bursting with Color, Wit and Just a Bit Too Much Plot, Filmmaker Greta Gerwig’s Barbie Gives the Doll Depth
Filmmaker Greta Gerwig is three for three. Her first film as director, Lady Bird, was a funny-because-it’s-true romp through teenage-dom, the epitome of an indie darling when it was released […]
Review: Filmmaker Christian Petzold Turns to Contemporary Life to Find Drama, Sparks in Afire
Filmmaker Christian Petzold has made a few of the most compelling European films of the last several years in Phoenix, the story of a Holocaust survivor searching for answers in […]
Review: Theater Kids Rally to Save Theater Camp, a Mockumentary with Humor and Heart
It’s possible that at some point in grade school or junior high, you graced the stage for a school theater production, some simplified version of an Agatha Christie mystery or, […]
Review: Final Cut Remakes a Japanese Cult Hit and Deftly Satirizes Low-Budget Filmmaking
You might not think the director of the Oscar-winning The Artist was the best choice for a zombie movie, but Final Cut isn’t exactly your standard-issue zombie movie. In fact, […]
Review: Rainforest Thriller Quicksand Offers Just Enough Tension, Believability to be Entertaining
‘I’m just now realizing that I kind of adore horror films in which the main threat to human life is in the title of the film. Why bother with a […]