The end credits of The Musical contain this dedication: “To all our theater teachers, who taught us the power of spite.” If you just didn’t let out a bark of laughter or maybe twist your mouth in a wry grin of acknowledgement, you will have a very hard time enjoying …
“Cozy murder” is a thing because it’s an easy way for our society to reassure itself that justice will be done. What’s more, we all fear the reaper, and working out how to manage our inevitable end is one of the most important things we do, individually and collectively. This …
Life rarely works out the way you want, whether or not you get what you want. The Christophers uses the art of painting as its metaphor for how people come to terms with what life has given them, and also what they do about it. It’s set entirely within London’s …
The first The Devil Wears Prada, based on a novel published in 2003, was released in 2006. It was the usual coming of age story in what remains a very unusual context for women: the world of work. An aspiring journalist named Andy (Anne Hathaway) became the second assistant to …
The LA-Based director and actor Lauren Noll made a splash in the short film circuit, leading the award-winning film The Heart of Texas by Gregory J.M. Kasunich. Besides working as an actor, she presents her first feature as a director, an effort funded through crowdfunding campaigns that allowed her to …
A true Europudding includes plenty of gratuitous nudity and loads of sex, but those are the only things missing from the supremely ridiculous The Blood Countess. This movie is not good, but it is such a stupidly fun good time that you should see it anyway. It is always a …
When discussing American Independent Cinema from the 1980s and 1990s, Hal Hartley’s name is a central one for the conversation. Releasing his low-budget NYC-shot film The Unbelievable Truth in 1989, the New York director launched his arguably most well-known works in the following years with Trust, Simple Men, and Flirt. …
A very pretty singer and an extremely handsome actor best known for television star in a romcom directed by someone with a solid career in light entertainment. There is some concern expressed as to whether the movie could be a success because the director is a woman and the stars …
Neo-noir Americana gets a decidedly 21st-century update in The Lowdown, showrunner Sterlin Harjo’s latest series released at the end of 2025 and now streaming on Hulu / Disney+. Like the best of the classic noirs, the anxieties of our time might be bubbling away under the surface, but this is …
Malcolm in the Middle ran right while I was in the midst of my baby-having years. I had four kids from 1998-2003 (no twins!), and watching Hal and Lois navigate their life helped me feel a little less crazy with my own household. Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair …
A lot of people are missing the point of The Bride! because they don’t want to consider the price paid for our entertainment. This is possibly because, in service to its original concept, this barnstorming horror movie contains only two original ideas not directly lifted from other films. The first …
It’s 2014 and Nadia (Monia Chokri) and Céline (Ella Rumpf) were recently legally able to get married in France. Hooray! And anyone who’s ever heard a playground chant knows what comes after love and marriage. Nadia is pregnant thanks to IVF and a Danish sperm donor, but Céline will have …
It makes no sense when a movie spoils itself through its own marketing. The central relationship in Washed Up has a twist that you probably haven’t been able to avoid! This is a giant mistake, because most of the humour and a great deal of the charm comes in how …
If you think Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo’s aesthetics will get more refined after his films have, over the years, preferred a more digitized (read: pixelated, desaturated, out-of-focus) aesthetic, think again! His latest film, within a corpus of slow cinema experiments, What Does That Nature Say to You, contains many of …
Someday a movie in which a group of teenagers throw a mock funeral for a hamster, complete with stone-faced pallbearers carrying a small coffin past hordes of wailing kids dressed up to the nines, will deserve a bad review, but today is not that day. Black Burns Fast has an …
Grace Glowicki’s Dead Lover arrives as Frankenstein tales are having a real cultural moment. With Guillermo del Toro’s film released last autumn (and picking up three Oscars) and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride currently in cinemas, Glowicki’s picture as director, co-writer (with Ben Petrie, who also stars) and star may not …
“It’s a dating app for dead bodies”. Yep, that’s the main concept that drives Sarah G. Pierce’s debut novel, For Human Use. Basically, a charismatic (arguably) guy convinces the world that in order to prove you’re truly well adjusted, you need to enjoy spending time hanging out with dead bodies. For some reason, Tom …
In 1980 Lily Tomlin was faced with a dilemma. She was riding high after winning a Tony with her one-woman play The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe and then starring in feminist revenge comedy 9 to 5, but then she had to do her next thing. …
The Brazilian director Gabe Klinger has built his career entirely in the United States. Based in Chicago, he directed the documentary Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater, Porto, and the short film Bergman’s Ghosts, a complementary work to Bergman Island, the Cannes film by Mia Hansen-Løve. For the first …
Even if he wasn’t dying from colon cancer, André Ricciardi would make a fascinating subject for a documentary. Tony Benna’s André Is an Idiot shows this clearly by giving us a look not just at his disease, but at the totality of his life, making this film a joyful celebration …