Movie Reviews
Movie Reviews

A Film with Something to Say: Matt Vesely on Monolith | Interviews

As an audience member, I am obsessed with genre. I’m a comic book nerd and Alien is my favorite movie ever. I’m drawn to genre because of how it can transport you to a whole new world which is exciting and strange. But also, genre can test characters in a larger-than-life way that pushes on

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Movie Reviews

The Throwaway Scene That Gives Blazing Saddles Its Warm Heart | MZS

If you keep your eyes fixed on Little you can see he’s barely holding it together. As Wilder works through the lines, he gets closer to losing it. You can tell it’s a blown take because the laughter is a spontaneous eruption, a thing that clearly wasn’t supposed to happen—and because Wilder glances up at

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Movie Reviews

Cobweb movie review & film summary (2024)

“Cobweb” takes place almost entirely on a soundstage for a Korean horror film being shot in the 1970s by a troubled director named, of course, Kim (the amazing Song Kang-ho of “Parasite” fame, along with so many others). Kim is making what needs to be his masterpiece—he calls it that more than once—a black-and-white feature

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Movie Reviews

Out of Darkness movie review & film summary (2024)

The movie begins around a campfire, and there are stories being told there. We’re in the company of a nomadic clan, with its own alpha male, named Adem (Chuku Modu), aptly enough. He’s a commonsensical type. When the elder of this band, Odal (Arno Lüning) tries to scare young Heron (Luna Mwezi) with a tale

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Movie Reviews

30 Minutes On: "Rocky"

As perfect a film as has ever been made, the original 1976 “Rocky” has become part of the pop culture unconscious, holding its spot as tightly as “Casablanca” and “It's a Wonderful Life.” It’s also as much of a medium-realigning work as the blockbuster that came out one year later, the first “Star Wars” (eventually subtitled “A New Hope”),

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Movie Reviews

The Promised Land movie review (2024)

“The Promised Land” is about ten movies in one. It’s a history lesson with a central figure driven by an impossible quest. There are bands of outlaws, sadistic aristocrats, and downtrodden peasants. There’s a little romance, a lot of torture, as well as a feisty runaway child. Historical epics like this really aren’t made anymore.

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Movie Reviews

She Is Conann movie review & film summary (2024)

Throughout Conann’s multiple incarnations, one character stays consistent. Rainer (Elina Löwensohn)—a tribute to Fassbinder? Wouldn’t be surprising—is a perverse dog-faced oracle in a studded leather jacket who follows Conann all of her life, documenting her with his Instamatic camera and delivering some of the film’s juiciest lines. (“Blessed are the necrophiles, never betrayed by their

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Movie Reviews

The Future of the Movies, Part 2

This series presents a different essay by a different writer on the first Friday of every month. Each one starts from the premise “The Future of the Movies.” The writer is free to expound on that title in whatever way they choose. It could be streaming, theatrical, AI, tech, representation, or anything else that comes to mind.

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Movie Reviews

Sundance 2024: Gaucho Gaucho, Union, Skywalkers: A Love Story | Festivals & Awards

The “star” of “Union” is the charismatic Chris Smalls, a former Amazon employee at its massive Staten Island warehouse, and the leader of a new union movement. As we all know full well by now, working conditions for Amazon employees are atrocious, at least in part because of how little collaborative negotiating can be done

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Movie Reviews

Tótem movie review & film summary (2024)

While Tona rests in the bedroom, his sisters and nieces scramble around the house in anticipation of guests. Between baking cakes and fighting over time getting ready in the bathroom, the chaos of the household contains a familiar familial nostalgia. It’s the typical conversational movement between bickering, gossip, and catching up that’s inherent to hosting

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