Past Lives is last year's anointed Sundance Darling, and it's a category to which I am not entirely allergic. Beasts of the Southern Wild, Whiplash, and Minari are all films I love. But for every victory there's a maudlin and sycophantic movie that inexplicably
David Ayer initially caught my attention at the age of 12 upon a screening of Street Kings with my grandpa. I was really into violence at the time, but Ayer mostly dropped off the map for me until Suicide Squad, which continues to hold the distinction of worst hatchet job
I had the one in a million good fortune to be able to see this on a 35mm print at Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo. I traveled to Japan because a dear friend invited me along on his pilgrimage to Wrestle Kingdom, the most important event for the largest Japan-based wrestling
American Fiction is delicate—sensitive—in a way few satires are. I expected to write something along the lines of, “it’s fine, but Bamboozled already exists, yada yada yada,” and yes, there are clear parallels between the two. Yet director/adapter Cord Jefferson wisely dodges the jagged edges of
A bunt from Wiseman, which is any other filmmaker’s homer so I still come away fairly satisfied. When it’s focused on the goings-on of the Troisgrois restaurant in Ouches, France, it’s got that same Frederick Wiseman magic I’ve come to love: deep dives into the processes,