The scene from which The Painted Bird takes its name is an odd one. Our protagonist, a young vagabond boy in mid-WW2 Eastern Europe, helps his caretaker slather a captured…
A recent study from the University of Chicago suggested that fans of horror movies are better equipped to deal with the COVID pandemic, partly because they’ve grown used to being…
The world’s most powerful government crippled by a virus. Police tear-gassing non-violent protesters but tolerating right-wing militias. The Arctic reaching Arizona-level temperatures. If humanity makes it through all this, there’ll…
The question on everyone’s mind has finally been answered: where has Joseph Gordon-Levitt been all these years? He starred in 2016’s Snowden shortly before the election, but when the world…
When Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing came out in 1989, there was much discussion around what “the right thing” actually was. At the film’s climax, a police officer murders…
Shirley is a semi-fictional film about Shirley Jackson, the acclaimed horror author behind The Haunting of Hill House. It’s based on a 2014 novel by Susan Scarf Merrell, a writer…
Feel-good movies get a bad rap. They might not be the most edifying movies in the world, but the world is pretty feel-bad right now, and a little feel-good on…
If you’ve been to Oracle, Arizona, you’ve probably visited the Biosphere 2 research facility (is there any other reason to be in Oracle?). For those who are too young or…
Despite being one of the few things left to do, watching movies during the coronavirus lockdown is a strange experience. What was innocuous in the olden days takes on brand…
Never Rarely Sometimes Always If there’s any proof that some karmic force is out there keeping the universe balanced, it’s that Never Rarely Sometimes Always—a quiet, realistic indie about a…
Nothing’s more fun than interpreting symbolism in movies! (No, that’s not sarcasm; this is a review of an indie drama about a cow—it comes with the territory.) Take Scorsese’s Raging…
If film critics aren’t careful, we can fall victim to a sensation colloquially known as “festival brain”. The hype-soaked atmosphere of a film festival can make critics more willing to…
