A movie called The Mosquito Bowl makes a promise with its title alone. It’s named after a real football game, played in the Pacific by Marines who had been college stars just a couple of years earlier, so you’d assume that game sits at the center of the story. Hold …
In recent American indie cinema, a fascinating name to study is Jeff Nichols. Since his debut in 2007 with Shotgun Stories, Nichols has examined the deep roots of the rural United States. Despite a few films in his catalog, his projects typically take place in the American South and rural …
It Will Happen Tonight pulls off a very difficult trick: it takes a story of infidelity and makes it exceptionally romantic. This is a huge surprise, because obviously you really shouldn’t be going around falling in love with people who aren’t the ones you married. But everyone knows the heart …
The global appetite for American stories is shrinking. The American political climate has an international impact which hardly any ordinary American person realises, but why should they, when they are too busy trying to survive it directly themselves. Bored kids with no money, nothing to do and no future to …
Before this Netflix series, my knowledge on East of Eden was non-existent. The John Steinbeck novel was never in my reader-loving orbit, making this Netflix series feel like a gamble of enjoyment. That said, with this cast, the results prove to be more satisfactory than I expected. East of Eden …
Despite a prolific career with his short films, the Brazilian director Allan Deberton made a splash with his Pacarrete in 2019, a well-received debut that audiences and critics admired during its release rollout throughout the pandemic. The film explored a dreamer who bothers her neighborhood over her failed dream of …
Every opinion I came across about The Only Living Pickpocket in New York before seeing it was positive. I didn’t see a single negative take, and with nothing else to go on, that consensus was carrying all of my expectations. I’m unfamiliar with Noah Segan as a director, as I …
There is a really boring recent trend in world cinema to make movies about rich people learning valuable lessons. From Triangle of Sadness onwards there has been too many movies about affluent people being all surprised that someone’s money is not the most important thing about them. The trouble is …
Company is directed by Casey Affleck, whose reputation as an actor is not unblemished, and whose reputation as a director will not be helped by the fact there are eight (eight!) credited cinematographers on Company, including himself. It is also not necessarily a positive thing that two of the movie’s …
You won’t have to wait long for directors Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson to answer the question at the top of most audience members’ minds when diving into Wicker. An adaptation of Ursula Mills’ “The Wicker Husband,” the directorial duo, who are also a real-life couple, know that most moviegoers wonder how on earth Olivia Colman’s …
Alejandro G. Iñárritu might have won the discourse game with Digger, but Romain Gavras has won the metatextual satire on the climate crisis with Sacrifice. The critically maligned character study on a vacuous actor suddenly caught in the middle of a terrorist attack during a climate change convention was largely …
We all know how the saying goes, there’s a first time for everything. For this film critic, Verity is officially my first ever delve into the world of Colleen Hoover film adaptations. Yes, Verity is yet another adaptation of a Hoover novel following the recent string of them chasing after …
Once again Tom Cruise has tried to hit a triple but instead has been immediately caught by the shortstop for a major out. Mr. Cruise’s first non-action role since his Axl Rose impression in 2012’s Rock of Ages was meant to be a bonanza for both the man as well …
It might be necessary to have a certain kind of family to truly appreciate this kind of disaster movie. If you know someone – your sister-in-law, perhaps? Or your least favourite cousin? – whose reaction on learning another relative will not be attending Christmas dinner is “How dare that bitch …
Christopher Nolan may have made many a release that is regarded as his best; and that’s the telltale sign of a good director. You get debates over The Prestige, Interstellar, The Dark Knight, Memento and more, but one film that doesn’t crop up as often as it should is Dunkirk. …
The self-indulgence of Hombre al Agua (which translates to “Man Overboard”) is kind of its point, for it’s about the ways people play parts in their lives and how privilege allows the privileged to change the terms of the act. Fortunately a movie in which the writer-director-coproducer also stars as …
MobLand season one was a pleasant television surprise in 2025. It was not revelatory, but it was incredibly entertaining genre fare. The season lived as a respectful inclusion in the vast pantheon of gangster stories. Now entering its second season only one question remains. Can season two maintain the pulsating …
At this point, I don’t need much more than Margaret Qualley (The Substance) on a poster. I’ve followed her since The Leftovers, still one of the best shows of the century, and it’s been a pleasure watching everyone else catch up. Between Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, Poor Things, …
A family is a fragile thing too often taken for granted, and once the love is gone it’s very hard to bring back. A Common Story has an unusual gimmick: it is about a family, but the child hardly features. For she has grown up and gone off to university, …
The first thing I liked about this movie was its title. The 1953 ascent of Everest has often been told as Edmund Hillary’s story, with the Sherpa who reached the summit beside him mentioned as the other guy in the photo. This film is called Tenzing. Not “Everest,” not “The …