Movie Reviews
Movie Review: ‘Leviticus’ makes a demon out of desire in an auspicious debut for Adrian Chiarella
What if the object of your desire was also the thing that’s trying to kill you? Not slowly irritating you to death for leaving the toilet seat up again. We mean actively trying to strangle you. That’s the intriguing premise behind the horror-satire “Leviticus,” an auspicious feature film debut for writer-director Adrian Chiarella that’s both […]
Movie Review: This train’s going fast, but the jokes fly even faster in “Stop! That! Train!’
Presidential candidates take note: If you ever want an effectively simple campaign slogan, you could do worse than this: “SHE FUN!” That’s the slogan that got President Judy Gagwell — aka RuPaul — elected, and if it puts a smile on your face, it’s a good sign that lots of other, er, gags from Gagwell […]
Movie Review: This train’s going fast, but the jokes fly even faster in “Stop! That! Train!’
Presidential candidates take note: If you ever want an effectively simple campaign slogan, you could do worse than this: “SHE FUN!” That’s the slogan that got President Judy Gagwell — aka RuPaul — elected, and if it puts a smile on your face, it’s a good sign that lots of other, er, gags from Gagwell […]
Movie Review: This train’s going fast, but the jokes fly even faster in “Stop! That! Train!’
Presidential candidates take note: If you ever want an effectively simple campaign slogan, you could do worse than this: “SHE FUN!” That’s the slogan that got President Judy Gagwell — aka RuPaul — elected, and if it puts a smile on your face, it’s a good sign that lots of other, er, gags from Gagwell […]
Movie Review: ‘Disclosure Day’ is classic Spielberg
“Disclosure Day” invites you into its world with a kick to the face. Or maybe it’s a stomp. Whatever it is, this opening sequence, in a garish professional wrestling ring, is bound to wake you up and make you wonder, first, if you’re in the right movie, and second, if Steven Spielberg has lost it. […]
Movie Review: Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas hit the right notes in ‘Power Ballad’
Let’s just say that the wedding band has never occupied the most exalted rung of the ladder in music. Playing “September” and “Celebration” is often what’s most required. As one member of the Bride and the Groove, the band at the center of John Carney’s new film, puts it: They’re not rock stars. They’re human […]
Movie Review: ‘Masters of the Universe’ does not have the power
“Masters of the Universe” might not know who its audience is. Sure, yes, perhaps “everyone” is the goal. Modern blockbusters are usually aiming for those golden four quadrants that might justify spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make a movie about an old toy. But as far as beautiful, blond Mattel products go, He-Man […]
Movie Review: ‘Backrooms’ goes from internet meme to the big screen
What evil lurks in the drabbest of interiors? The meme-rooted “Backrooms” is the latest movie to pull its mounting horrors out of liminal spaces. “Exit 8,” released earlier this year, was set entirely in a subway corridor. In “Backrooms,” a struggling furniture salesperson discovers beneath his store an underground labyrinth, all lined with yellow wallpapered […]
Movie Review: Boots Riley’s ‘I Love Boosters’ is a wild, surrealist social satire
Boots Riley holds nothing back in his audacious, surrealist social satire “I Love Boosters.” The film is a go-for-broke expression of wild imagination and social consciousness that’s impossible not to admire for its wacky, bold vision, with teleporting, high fashion snobbery and pyramid schemes. Here is a movie where we get Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie […]
Movie Review: Sorry not sorry — ‘Is God Is’ stakes a claim for unapologetic female rage
As playwright Aleshea Harris tells it, something felt missing when she first sat down to write her searing and startling play “Is God Is,” which made waves off-Broadway in 2018. Harris was writing an epic story of Black female revenge, one that drew on Greek tragedy and mythology, but also spaghetti westerns and a liberal […]