At the end of The Beguiled, as I was thinking, “what did I just watch?”
I heard a man mutter, “That’s the worst movie I’ve ever seen.”
Clearly, this latest film from Sofia Coppola, which earned her Best Director at Cannes, is not going to . . .
Wonder Woman was one of the most anticipated movies of the summer, and it lived up to the expectations, both at the box office and in terms of quality. The movie delivered nostalgia without being too corny and presented a fairly nuanced portrait of . . .
When I reviewed The Circle, I suggested that the book must be better than the movie. I read the book and can confirm that the film was a weak adaptation. I might have to read Everything, Everything, because if The Circle was a bad adaptation, this . . .
The pairing of a beloved comedic actress of an earlier generation and one of comedy’s biggest names today in a mother-daughter adventure comedy released Mother’s Day weekend without any of the saccharine frills that usually accompany that holiday . . .
Since the election, tech and media companies have asked hard questions about their roles in our democracy. The Circle picks up these same questions, as well as those about privacy, sharing, and the value of all those likes, hearts, and emojis.
The Circle . . .
In The Void, a police officer, Daniel Carter (Aaron Poole) drops an injured man off at a barely functioning hospital, to be cared for by nurse-his wife, Allison (Kathleen Munroe)-and her trainee, Kim (Ellen Wong). Meanwhile, a teenage girl, Maggie . . .
In the last month, I’ve reviewed a couple of monster movies. King Kong: Skull Island considered the impact of man on the environment. Life featured a scary Martian life form. In The Zookeeper’s Wife, however, all of the monsters are human.
In The . . .
Full disclosure: the King Kong movies make me emotional. The determination of people to capture the giant ape after barging into his home makes me very anxious for his well-being, rather than that of my fellow humans. It’s a bit of a stressful experience, . . .
When comedian and horror-fan Jordan Peele wrote and directed his own scary movie, I was not sure what to expect. Get Out looks like a horror movie spin on Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner? but instead offers a fun, incisive mixture of horror and humor.
In . . .
Honestly, when I first saw posters for Jackie starring Natalie Portman as the former First Lady, I was deeply skeptical about what another pop culture portrayal could possibly offer. Instead of focusing on the glamour and society life of Jacqueline . . .
M. Night Shyamalan tries too hard. For years, I have mused over why he has struggled to make a film on par with The Sixth Sense. After watching Split, I think that the problem is that he takes an interesting idea and frets so much over whether or not . . .
La La Land tells the story of Mia (Emma Stone) and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), an aspiring actress and a jazz pianist who fall in love while also trying to make their dreams come true in Hollywood. As Mia struggles to land good parts as an actress, balancing . . .
Manchester by the Sea, a film getting a lot of early Oscar buzz, focuses on family dysfunction and grief in a season that often dwells on the warm-fuzzies. In doing so, however, it takes the characters and the audience on an ultimately life-affirming . . .
Back in 2005, I wrote a review for Mr. & Mrs. Smith starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, rumored to be having an on-set affair. In my review, I commented on what I perceived as a lack of chemistry between the stars. Eleven years later, here I . . .
As a woman with a Ph.D., I have a bit of a soft spot for stories in which the hero is another woman with a Ph.D. That admitted bias aside, Arrival offered a thought-provoking and emotional story about the challenges of communicating wrapped up in a . . .
I’m not much of a Dan Brown fan—I’ve read just one of his books (ten years ago), and until now had seen none of the movies—but I am a fan of Dante. In college, I had a bit of an obsession with The Divine Comedy for a while, and that brought . . .
Every now and then, I check out a book that I am able to read in one day, because I just can’t put it down. The Girl on the Train was one of those books for me. Although calling it a “novel that shocked the world” seems like overreaching, it . . .
I have come to assume that a film helmed by Disney will shy away from more complicated parts of life and instead rely heavily on cliches and feel-good lessons. With director Mira Nair at the helm, Disney’s Queen of Katwe is shockingly light on cheesiness . . .
If the cliché holds that no good deed goes unpunished, then Sully captures the ways in which Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger is punished for the risk he took in making an emergency landing on the Hudson River in January of 2009.
Sully picks . . .
The Light Between the Oceans takes place on an island called Janus, named after the Roman god with two faces, allowing him to look in both directions. Like the island and its namesake, the film has two faces. It is both a tender love story and a survey . . .
Summer is a popular season for comedies about friends traveling together. This month’s Joshy, gives the genre a different spin by focusing on the hijinks of a mismatched group of friends as they celebrate their friend Josh’s (Thomas Middleditch) . . .
After how much I enjoyed Ghostbusters, I should have known that it was too much to hope for another great female ensemble film this summer. Bad Moms was clearly designed to provide an outlet for the pent-up frustrations of mothers nationwide. Instead, . . .
Do you remember seeing a movie as a kid and wanting to run out and play like you were the characters? The remake of Ghostbusters starring an all-female ghostbusting team inspired that level of delight in me.
I’m sure you know the plot of this film, . . .
I have a dog who is so devoted to me that it crosses over from sweet and loyal to slightly pathetic and disconcerting. I am pretty fond of her too. When I go to work and she makes a dash for the door, with the plea of “Take me with you!” written . . .