David Mackenzie’s new thriller starring Riz Ahmed offers a fresh take on an espionage suspense film—but Relay doesn’t take full advantage of its unique aspects.
Author: Josh
Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest stumbles, even as Denzel soars
Spike Lee’s “re-imagining” of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low opens with Matthew Libateque’s glossy footage of New York City waking up in a golden sunrise reflected off shiny buildings. “Oh What A Beautiful Morning” from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! blasts over the soundtrack. It’s definitely a beautiful morning, but for record exec David King it will be anything but a beautiful day.
Fantastic Four: First Steps is no giant leap for Marvelkind
The Fantastic Four has proven to be an oddly tricky team of superheroes to adapt. After decades languishing in the custody of other studios, Marvel finally got their “First Family” back after a pricey union with 20th Century Fox. Six years after those nuptials, the first MCU-produced family takes its first steps onto the big screen this weekend. With a fresh visual palette and a quaint sense of optimism, it’s a reliably agreeable re-introduction to a quartet that’s slated to be a key piece of Marvel’s latest phase of storytelling, that falls somewhere between Fantastic Snore and Fantastic Fine on the excitement-meter.
Ari Aster drags us back to pandemic hell with Eddington
Hard to believe it’s already been five years since the SARS-CoV-2 landed on our shores, and the response to the novel coronavirus shredded the hearts and minds of the United States into a toxic waste dump whose halflife remains unknown. Or at least that’s the feeling that one gets from watching Eddington, the latest from the twisted mind of horror auteur Ari Aster. After a Cannes premiere approximately coinciding with the anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic, it crashes into theaters this weekend like the Kool-Aid Man running through a brick wall, but more painfully.
Eva Victor’s Sundance standout Sorry, Baby returns to Seattle
Everyone was right: Eva Victor’s wondrously delicate and wry Sorry Baby is definitely the film of Sundance (and later, SIFF). As producers, Barry Jenkins and Adele Romanski basically never miss. It’s now back in Seattle.
With F1 ® The Movie Apple Studios Starts their Engines
Joseph Kosinski continues to establish himself as the cinematic poet laureate of aging men and fast metal. Like Maverick before it, F1 The Movie sees a past-his-prime speed demon called back into service for one last shot to live out his dreams and save a massive enterprise. Both might be better interpreted as death reveries, but damn if it isn’t incredibly fun to coast alongside their heroes in the perpetual golden hour of wish fulfillment.
The Life of Chuck reaches for multitudes
Told in three acts in reverse, Mike Flanagan has made a lovely little Stephen King adaptation about how Tom Hiddleston came to be an exceptional dancer who contains multitudes.
Celine Song’s Materialists checks a lot of boxes, but is that enough?
Fresh off the enormous success of Past Lives, Celine Song returns to the world of divided affections in Manhattan. Her first semi-autobiographical film concerned yearning across decades and missed connections across continents. It was among my favorite movies of 2023 , an Oscar nominee, and Seattle Film Critics Society’s Best Picture of the Year. Materialists, which finds her returning as both writer and director, is also loosely inspired by her own past life, bringing a more cynical eye to the complexity of beautiful people seeking soulmates from the comfortable side of the precipitous economic divide.
Wes Anderson spins a timely yarn with The Phoenician Scheme
Wes Anderson movies are a genre unto themselves, often misunderstood as shallow, whimsical dioramas. That some fail to see the immense emotion beneath the ornately hand-crafted surfaces and trademark camera positioning and movement remains a matter of great mystery to those of us who eagerly watch and rewatch each film and revisit the old ones to find new depths. His latest, The Phoenician Scheme, is unlikely to change that perception, but to me it’s another unqualified success.
SIFF 2025 Notebook: Boy Troubles (Rebuilding, The Things You Kill, Good Boy)
My closing weekend at SIFF inadvertently turned into a trio of films loosely themed about men figuring their stuff out, often alone, in desolate spaces.