Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
Top Gun: Maverick is more than a nostalgia sequel or legacyquel; it is almost more than a movie. It is a manifesto and a monument, a defiant time capsule and a swaggering IMAX spectacle without precedent or peer.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)
I’m thinking of a moment in the original movie in which Stephen looks skeptically at a deeply corrupted individual nattering about the greater good and retorts, “No. I mean, come on — look at your face.” Nobody says that in the sequel, but they should.
Trying to reach the sublime: Robert Eggers, cinematic poet of the past
In the Viking epic The Northman, the arthouse horror auteur behind The Witch and The Lighthouse takes on his most ambitious challenge to date.
Petite Maman: A quietly powerful fairytale about childhood, loss, and ties that bind
For a child, losing a grandparent can be part of growing up, a coming-of-age experience; losing a parent for an adult can be an encounter with childhood, especially if it involves going through the contents of the household they grew up in, the actual stuff of their childhood.
Father Stu is a mostly endearing, shaggy redemption story
Based on the unlikely true story of an amateur boxer turned priest who died of a rare degenerative disease, Father Stu leans on Wahlberg’s mischievous charm and buoyant aura of invincibility, with hints of something darker and more fragile beneath the surface.
“Everything happens for a reason”: Mark Wahlberg and Teresa Ruiz on Father Stu
I recently spoke with Mark Wahlberg and Teresa Ruiz via Zoom about making the film and what it meant to them.
The Godfather’s two endings: Lighting a candle and the wrong side of the door
Now half a century old, Francis Ford Coppola’s revered New Hollywood masterpiece has one of the best-known final shots in film history — but it almost had a much more Catholic ending.
Mother knows best: Turning Red, Encanto, and Disney/Pixar’s new overbearing moms
The familiar animation trope of the domineering dad and the (sometimes) supportive mom gets an update in recent films from the Mouse House.
Caped crusaders and the common good
Questions around how what people need and deserve and how they should be governed are of course recurring themes in the saga of Zorro’s more famous heir, Batman … We don’t look to superhero movies to answer these questions for us, but their varying answers tell us something about ourselves and the times in which they were made.
Cyrano (2021)
Dinklage swaggers and glowers magnificently and sings decently, but he’s at his best in quiet, intimate moments, especially with Roxanne and with his confidante Le Bret, the only one who sees his pain.
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