For the first thirty minutes or so, The President’s Cake sets up its premise — that an Iraqi girl must overcome poverty and food shortages fueled by economic sanctions against… Continue reading "The President’s Cake (Hadi, 2025)"
There is an irony or a writer’s lesson or something to be gleaned from the fact that I started the “Favorite Film Series” because I wanted an excuse to write… Continue reading "Favorite Film Series: The Godfather (Coppola, 1972)"
When reviewing a new film by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, the only pertinent question is whether the frame of reference for judgment will be their other films or something broader.… Continue reading "Young Mothers (Dardenne & Dardenne, 2026)"
When I first saw the trailer for The Carpenter’s Son, the new film loosely based on Apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, I confess my heart sank a little. I am old… Continue reading "The Carpenter’s Son: A New Testament Scholar Discusses Controversial Depiction of Jesus"
“Why don’t you just fake the whole show?” Buried in the rubble of the mess that is Edgar Wright’s adaptation of Stephen King’s dystopian novel, protagonist Ben Richards (Glen Powell)… Continue reading "The Running Man (Wright, 2025)"
I don’t know if it is accurate to call director François Ozon a critic’s darling, but I note that his last fifteen films, over a span of eighteen years, are… Continue reading "When Fall is Coming (Ozon, 2025)"
Blue Moon is a film so dour, so bitter, so devoid of joy or hope or spirit, that even those who praise it have trouble articulating why they are doing… Continue reading "Blue Moon (Linklater, 2025)"
Comedy about specific ethnic or religious groups can be one of the hardest genre subsets to evaluate because the line between Horatian self-deprecation and Juvenalian contempt can move–or appear to–depending… Continue reading "One Big Happy Family (Sohn, 2025)"
Nuremberg is a sprawling mess of a movie, one that I admittedly appreciated all the more for its messiness. Topics like the Final Solution don’t lend themselves to commercial slickness,… Continue reading "Nuremberg (Vanderbilt, 2025)"
East of Wall occupies a murky space between drama and documentary where it is not always apparent what is embellishment and what is meant to be accepted at face value.… Continue reading "East of Wall (Beecroft, 2025)"
