Movie Reviews
Movie Reviews

It’s Time to Grow Up: Joe Swanberg and Cory Michael Smith on “The Sun Never Sets”

Taking full advantage of its sun-kissed ambiance and featuring wonderfully lived-in performances from its central cast, director Joe Swanberg’s “The Sun Never Sets” is an understated, whimsical look at the ways adults fail to love one another, while also being a testament to how it’s never too late to start over, even if you think

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Movie Reviews

FX’s Exhilarating “The Drop: A Snowfall Saga” Is a Spin-off For the Ages

Three years after FX’s “Snowfall” ended, the show’s first spin-off is finally here. Originally announced in 2023, “The Drop: A Snowfall Story” follows fan-favorite Wanda Bell (Gail Bean) as she embarks on a career in the music industry after finally getting clean from drugs. She, along with her cousins Lamar (Asante Blackk) and James (Peyton

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Movie Reviews

Short Films in Focus: Bouncy Brothers (with Nicholas J. Santore)

As you’ve traveled this summer, either at carnivals, block parties, state fairs, or street fairs, you have probably seen a bouncy house. Someone was in charge of getting that bouncy house to that location, inflating it, testing it out, and waiting for the rental to be finished so they could deflate it, roll it back

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Movie Reviews

“Onimusha: Way of the Sword” is a Drawn-Out Samurai Epic

Capcom has had an incredible 2026 so far, with the releases of the fantastic “Resident Evil Requiem,” “Pragmata,” and “Monster Hunter Stories 3.” Rounding out the year is “Onimusha: Way of the Sword.” It’s the latest mainline entry in the series after a staggering 20-year hiatus, the last one being 2006’s “Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams”

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Movie Reviews

Live Wire: Michael Wright, 1956-2026

As a journalist, I only had a few interactions with the late Michael Wright, mainly at industry functions and movie premieres. The one I think about most had nothing to do with his filmography, which included “The Principal,” “The Five Heartbeats,” “Sugar Hill,” and HBO’s long-running prison drama Oz. It happened at a party for

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Movie Reviews

Shabana Amzi on Her Career, Vulnerability, and “Batwara 1947”

Ask any working actor today in the Hindi film industry, and chances are they’ll cite Shabana Azmi as an inspiration. Over a career of 160-plus films that began in 1974, not to mention a record five National Film Awards (India’s equivalent of the Oscars; the most won by any Indian actress), Azmi has demonstrated an

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Movie Reviews

Sheer Force of Ambition: David Kittredge on “Exorcist II” and “Boorman and the Devil”

From practically the moment that it first hit theaters in June of 1977, “Exorcist II: The Heretic,” John Boorman’s follow-up to William Friedkin’s enormously successful 1973 adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s best-seller, has been written off as one of the biggest and most baffling disasters in Hollywood history.  In many ways, the virulence it received

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Movie Reviews

Locarno Film Festival 2026: 17 Urgent Hollywood Blacklist Films

Bold. Radical. Urgent. Those words could describe the last few years the Locarno Film Festival has screened its daring classic retrospectives. But they’ve never been felt more than in the latest edition curated by filmmaker, writer, and programmer Ehsan Khoshbakht. Last year’s postwar Britain program included 45 films made in England between 1945 and 1960.

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Movie Reviews

Locarno 2026: I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming, Hearing, Bruton

Though I have left Locarno, I haven’t finished writing about its many idiosyncratic offerings. The festival today announced its awards, including the recipient of the Golden Leopard (more on that in my final dispatch). And while I’m thrilled by many of the winners, in this dispatch I’d like to highlight a couple of films that

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Movie Reviews

Locarno 2026: Nowhere To Lay My Eyes, At Night, Nobody’s Violence

In these dispatches I often talk about themes naturally arising or not arising at all between films. Well, the throughline between these trio of titles couldn’t be clearer: They all thoroughly contemplate death and mortality. Two of the films are from veterans while a third one is a filmmaker’s feature directorial debut—though to be sure

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