Nia DaCosta’s update of Henrik Ibsen’s classic 1891 play Hedda Gabler is such a frustrating watch I found myself making excuses to finish watching it, including watching 29 innings of two World Series games and a Seahawks drubbing of the lowly Washington Commanders. It wasn’t bad, per se, just frustrating because it could’ve been so much better.
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere excavates the Nebraska Origin Myth
Who was it that said :all unhappy rock stars are alike, no happy rock star has ever truly existed in the history of this earth?” Probably the same esteemed writer who famously pondered “War, what is it good for?”
Train Dreams is among the best of the Pacific Northwest
Opening with a spectacular shot of a massive tree falling in the woods (shot from the perspective of the tree) in the late 1800s and spanning decades into the twentieth century, Train Dreams was one of the major premieres to emerge from this year’s Sundance. Ahead of its theatrical release, it plays next week as a special presentation by the Seattle Film Critics Society.
Rose Byrne is a mother on the verge of a nervous breakdown in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
It’s a facile comparison given the involvement of a Safdie brother on the production team, but If I Had Legs I’d Kick You very much has the feeling of Uncut Gems for motherhood
Mary Shelley would be giddy over del Toro’s Frankenstein
The story is a metaphor for many things and if you read it in high school English I’m sure you discussed more than your fair share of conclusions, so I’ll digress from that. However, what I’ve read of and from her, Mary Shelley loved the macabre. Dark stories that hit at the heart of our deepest desires and most crippling weaknesses. Intensity is the key. I had an inkling, but even while watching del Toro’s take on this story, I was confident Shelley would be enthralled by his re-imagining.
Black Phone 2 rings true…some of the time
Black Phone 2 (2025 | USA | 114 minutes | Scott Derrickson) The Black Phone, writer/director Scott Derrickson’s thriller about a young …
Luca Guadagnino wades into the mess of campus cancel culture with After the Hunt
It’s hard to know what to make of Luca Guadagnino’s new film, a puzzling muddle of a campus #MeToo drama.
In Good Fortune Keanu Reeves tries to save Aziz Ansari’s soul
Good Fortune, Aziz Ansari’s directorial debut, is a tight 90 minutes of genuine laughs, relying primarily on well-timed line delivery rather than gimmicks or cheesy physical comedy.
The sad truth of Roofman is what it reveals about the world we live in
In Roofman we see the world through the everyman Jeffrey Manchester (Channing Tatum). It starts off with his most notorious act, robbing a McDonalds, but in the sweetest way you can while holding hostages at gunpoint. The story backs up a little to explain what brought him to that point: after leaving the military he had no real sense of who he was or how he fit in the world. The only thing he really did well was observation, seeing the details that others missed (or maybe just didn’t use for their own gain).
Kiss of the Spider Woman brings razzle and dazzle to a dingy, Argentinian prison
“The story unfolds mostly in a dank Argentinian prison where Valentín is being held for his revolutionary activities. Desperate to extract information from him as torture has thus far proven ineffective, prison officials introduce a new cellmate, Molina, who is sent to spy on Valentín in exchange for the promise of release to see his ailing mother in her final days.”