Michael Keaton has been acting in movies long enough to know that if you’re making one, as he does for the second time with the proficient neo-noir “Knox Goes Away,” your opening shot needs to say something. His says it all: a tight close-up inventories the personal affects of an unseen figure taking them one by one, heading out the door, then doubling back to grab the watch, filling the audio track with its relentless ticking.

Continue reading ‘Knox Goes Away’ Review: Michael Keaton Directs Himself In A Slickly Somber Neo-Noir [TIFF] at The Playlist.

Everybody loves a winner turned loser, especially these days, Taika Waititi. As of late, in his non-“Thor” directorial output, the once-beloved filmmaker has gravitated toward zeroes meekly shuffling around the margins of power. He’s vaunted swagless vampires dissed by alpha-werewolf rivals, the dweebiest li’l squadron the Third Reich ever saw, and with his latest film “Next Goal Wins” — a slight step up from his calamitously precious take on the Holocaust, which has left him with an evident self-destructive impulse to tackle issues bigger than he can handle — he rallies the losingest club in the history of international soccer. 

Continue reading ‘Next Goal Wins’ Review: Taika Waititi Gets One Big Red Card For His Underdog Soccer Comedy [TIFF] at The Playlist.

Cults and eating disorders warp the mind much in the same way: they convince the individual that their behavior is special and vital, that everyone else can’t see themselves or the world clearly, and that any external opposition only proves the effectiveness and power of their behavior. In her grueling new film “Club Zero,” Austria’s most fearless button-pusher Jessica Hausner fuses the two into a trajectory of slow-moving, inexorable body horror as primly buttoned-up as the lemon-lime polo shirt uniforms selected by her costume-designer sister Tanja.

Continue reading ‘Club Zero’ Review: Jessica Hausner Mines Straight-Faced Body Horror From An Eating Disorder Cult [Cannes] at The Playlist.

In “May December,” there’s trouble in the paradise of Savannah, Georgia, where the skeins of Spanish moss draped over corridors of trees wave in the gentle coastal zephyrs with each night’s picture-perfect sunset. Spouses Gracie (Julianne Moore) and Joe (Charles Melton) have opened their palatial home for a backyard BBQ; he’s manning the grill, and she’s darting about trying to make everything just right, each well aware of their role to play.

Continue reading ‘May December’ Review: An Actor Prepares In Todd Haynes’ Superlative Age-Gap Dramedy [Cannes] at The Playlist.

Somewhere in the third hour of Steve McQueen’s documentary “Occupied City,” the camera slowly dollies left over a list of names in glowing green print on a black background, enumerating the thousands of Jews deported from Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation. A moment of silence in the audio mix announces this as an important shot, an occasion to consider the enormity of the loss that this four-and-a-half-hour film itemizes with near-comprehensive diligence.

Continue reading ‘Occupied City’ Review: Steve McQueen’s 4-Hour Doc Leads A Tour Of Nazi Atrocities Through Amsterdam [Cannes] at The Playlist.

Superheroism is serious business, or at least that’s what the rubble-colored glower-fests clogging cineplexes these days would have us believe. But director David F. Sandberg has appreciated his tenure at the helm of the “Shazam” franchise specifically for how it offers a counterpoint to the usual gloom-charged intensity of the DC Cinematic Universe. When mild-mannered teen Billy Batson (Asher Angel) gains the powers of strength, speed, and flight (not to mention transforming into the adult body of Zachary Levi), he’s as psyched as any other kid would be, and the film emulates his enthusiasm with a juvenile spirit fueled by a diet of Gatorade, Doritos, and Skittles.

Continue reading ‘Shazam’: David F. Sandberg Talks ‘Fury Of The Gods’ & The Future Of The Franchise [Interview] at The Playlist.

Adonis “Donnie” Creed, the indefatigable boxer played by actor-turned-director Michael B. Jordan in the “Creed” franchise now entrusted to his rookie camera, measures his life in wins and losses; so do we. The original “Rocky” clinched its classic status with a noble-defeat ending that proved the Italian Stallion led the league in heart no matter what his record said, and hungry young Donnie did the same in his first big-screen square-up.

Continue reading ‘Creed III’ Review: Hollywood’s Winningest Franchise Is Losing Its Scrappy Underdog Appeal at The Playlist.

Like so many young performers, Sydney Sweeney proved that she was a star before she could get the chance to prove that she was a well-rounded actor. Her name-making gigs as a vindictive, canonically gorgeous high schooler on TV’s “Euphoria,” a vindictive, canonically gorgeous college sophomore on “The White Lotus,” and a vindictive, canonically gorgeous recent grad in the “The Voyeurs” all required her to channel an innate charisma toward variations on a broadly consistent type, her abilities yet to be stretched far enough to chart their full potential.

Continue reading ‘Reality’ Review: Sydney Sweeney Delivers A Tour De Force As A Cornered Whistleblower [Berlin] at The Playlist.

Not yet thirty years old, Mia Goth has already collaborated with several world-renowned filmmakers for her willingness to follow their most demented muses. Her girlish appearance strikes a shocking contrast with the atrocity exhibitions that she gravitates toward: eagerly taking to sexual grooming in Lars Von Trier’s “Nymphomaniac;” undergoing forcible insemination and grisly spaghettification with Claire Denis in “High Life;” becoming an insane asylum’s incestuous princess for Gore Verbinski in “A Cure for Wellness;” witnessing her own disembowelment as part of the orgiastic blood ritual Luca Guadagnino that’s the grand finale to “Suspiria;” manifesting a century of madness for Ti West’s in-progress trio of period pieces of “X,” “Pearl,” and the upcoming “Maxxxine.” And so it’s no surprise that Goth’s latest outing is another twisted affair: Brandon Cronenberg‘s “Infinity Pool,” which takes place at a Mediterranean beach resort that hides a violent and depraved sub-culture.

Continue reading ‘Infinity Pool’: Mia Goth & Brandon Cronenberg Talk About Their “Unhinged” New Film, The Material Magic Of Practical Effects & More [Interview] at The Playlist.

Ira Sachs prefers relationships of the doomed variety — tempestuous passions torn asunder, sometimes by external forces like capitalism, which complicated the search for a home through New York’s cutthroat real estate market in “Love Is Strange” and “Little Men.” His latest film — the sexy, frustrating, loose-yet-compact, altogether irresistible three-hander “Passages” — also concerns property contracts and a homeless protagonist. However, this one’s got nobody but himself to blame for that predicament, fluent as he is in the same toxic strain of amour fou that previously perfumed the air in “Keep the Lights On” and especially Sachs’ debut, “The Delta.” As in that film — also pitched at the admirably humble quotidian scale Sachs hasn’t felt the need to exceed in more than a quarter decade — “Passages” follows a bisexual chaos agent so wrapped up in his own narcissism that he can’t see where his self-exploration ends and insensitivity to those around him begins.

Continue reading ‘Passages’ Review: Franz Rogowski, Adèle Exarchopoulos & Ben Whishaw Star In Ira Sachs’ Irresistible Love Triangle [Sundance] at The Playlist.

If Jordan Firstman did not exist, it would be necessary for Sebastián Silva to invent him. “Discomfort rooted in class friction” and “the perverse amusement of watching people be annoying” rank high on the list of stalwart indie filmmaker Silva’s favorite recurring themes, and no modern type marries the two quite as handily as the social media influencer that plague of shamelessly promotional non-celebrities who adopt the entitled mindset of fame long before breaking into the industry sector accommodating it.

Continue reading ‘Rotting In The Sun’ Review: Jordan Firstman Is Daringly Annoying In Sebastián Silva’s Sly Meta-Comedy [Sundance] at The Playlist.

In 2020, the filmmaker Matt Smukler — his most widely seen work then a Deutsche Telekom ad campaign starring Justin Bieber — completed a short about his wife’s sister’s family. Sheila Stahl and her husband Mike weren’t so different from any other small-town couple, a pair of good Christians gratefully receiving the daily pleasures of their hobbies (stock car racing, arts and crafts), their comfy recliners, and each other’s company.

Continue reading ‘Wildflower’ Review: Kiernan Shipka Gets Her Own ‘CODA’ In A Gentle Comedy About A Unique Family [TIFF] at The Playlist.

Haute cuisine — the worst, right? Minuscule portions, inscrutable foams, and spheres scattered across gigantic plates festooned with equally baffling smears and powders, prices not to be looked upon by those with documented cardiac conditions. Worst of all is the pomposity, the highfalutin puffing-up of dinner from a source of sustenance and joy into a dense text meant to be pondered, analyzed, and described more than savored. Molecular gastronomy uses science to remove the humanity from food.

Continue reading ‘The Menu’ Review: Foodie Black Comedy’s Condescending Class Critiques Don’t Cut The Mustard [TIFF] at The Playlist.

A person hires a dominatrix for the same reason they subscribe to organized religion: to give themselves over to a higher power. In Zachary Wigon’s terrific two-hander “Sanctuary,” he invests the dynamic between a roleplaying sex worker and her longest-term client with all the devotional, frustrated intensity of an implacable deity and the quavering mortal who labors to appease her. (It’s no coincidence that guys like this are always calling their dommes “goddesses.”) She gets money and perhaps some personal fulfillment from her work; he gets purpose and certainty, the messiness of life reorganized into a clear-cut program of tasks to be carried out and approvals to be earned.

Continue reading ‘Sanctuary’ Review: Margaret Qualley & Christopher Abbott Roleplay With Sex & BDSM Kink In A Terrific Two-Hander [TIFF] at The Playlist.

It would be empty hyperbole to declare Eddie Redmayne our worst living actor; in all likelihood, the honor belongs to someone nobody’s ever heard of, so bad that they never became famous in the first place. But in Tobias Lindholm’s new drama “The Good Nurse,” Redmayne still makes a bold argument for some qualified version of the statement. 

During the early stretches that see him in one of his two settings as a performer – so anemic and withdrawn that he appears to be trying to stop existing – one might wonder whether he’s merely the worst of his Hollywood class.

Continue reading ‘The Good Nurse’ Review: Eddie Redmayne Does A Whole Lot Of Acting In Ripped-From-The-Headlines Medical Thriller [TIFF] at The Playlist.

As history lessons go, it’s a fascinating one: Joseph Bologne, born to a married plantation proprietor in the French colony of Guadeloupe and a Creole woman held as a slave there, would grow up to attain such repute as a violinist, composer, and conductor that he was granted the title of Chevalier de Saint-Georges then and “the Black Mozart” now. In the pitchy biopic “Chevalier,” he earns this sobriquet in a literal capacity by storming into a concert from Wolfgang himself, already in progress, challenging him to a violin battle, and owning him so hard that the crowd bursts into a rabid standing ovation.

Continue reading ‘Chevalier’ Review: An Electric Kelvin Harrison Jr. Can’t Quite Save The Biopic Clichés Of A Revisionist Black Mozart [TIFF] at The Playlist.

There’s water, water everywhere in “Causeway,” the strong cinematic debut of accomplished theatre mainstay Lila Neugebauer — and oh so much to think about. The laconic Lynsey (a resurgent Jennifer Lawrence in what is plainly her career’s finest performance) explains that she’s drawn to water on a deep, source-of-all-life level while convincing a pool cleaning service’s manager to give her a job skimming scum and fixing filters.

Continue reading ‘Causeway’ Review: Jennifer Lawrence Has A Superb Second Coming In A Tender, But Downbeat Character Piece [TIFF] at The Playlist.

The secret to “Weird Al” Yankovic’s estimable powers is that he’s flagrantly, proudly, irresistibly uncool. He plays the accordion, one of the few instruments that no musician in human history has ever gotten laid for mastering, and he uses it to perform polka-themed parodies redolent of cornball Borscht Belt acts far from any sector of comedy even adjacent to ‘edgy.’ His songs reflect this much in that they’re basically about nothing, riffs on relatable banalities like finishing your dinner, or absurdities like Amish hip-hop.

Continue reading ‘Weird: The Al Yankovic Story’ Review: Novelty Acts & Cult Heroes Take The Spotlight In Daffy Anti-Biopic [TIFF] at The Playlist.

Matthew Heineman’s latest documentary, “Retrograde,” opens with a pan from left to right across the mountain ranges of Afghanistan. Audio clips overlay soundbites from four generations of Presidents discussing the American invasion of the Middle East, from the purposeful threat-neutralizing of the Dubya years to Obama-era fatigue to the wavering defeatism of Trump to Biden’s resolution for withdrawal. As the situation goes quagmire and the hope in their cascading voiceover fades away, the frame changes along with it, sliding on a gradient from crisply defined peaks backlit by sunrise into the murky limited visibility and ominous unknowability of night.

Continue reading ‘Retrograde’ Review: Matthew Heineman’s Afghan War Doc Takes A Blinkered, Sanitized View Of America’s Role [Telluride] at The Playlist.

Lurching unnaturally back to life nearly twenty years after Lars von Trier first plumbed the depths of madness contained within Copenhagen’s Rigethospitalet, “The Kingdom: Exodus” has returned, now swarming with ghosts. The five new episodes serve as a continuation of the auteur’s ‘90s-era surreal gallows comedy while looking inward, making conversation with its own past as well as the sinister penumbra of history itself. Aside from the malevolent spirits converging on the hospital due to its location atop the former site of hellacious “bleaching ponds,” characters from the original run reappear in altered forms as if through a perverse form of reincarnation.

Continue reading ‘The Kingdom: Exodus’ Review: Lars Von Trier Is Down With The Sickness In Revived Hospital Comedy Series [Venice] at The Playlist.

In the year 2000, the late literary critic James Wood put forth the concept of “hysterical realism,” a then-emergent micro-genre in which the delirious overstimulation of modern life is expressed through a hoarder-caliber accumulation of detail. At the time, he was talking about the likes of Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace, and Zadie Smith, and their doorstopper works’ endless minutiae on land surveying or tennis strategy or the ethics of lab rat usage.

Continue reading ‘Heat 2’ Review: Michael Mann Delivers More UltraCops, Gutter Poetry & Fetishistic Nitty-Grittiness at The Playlist.

The loss of acting legend James Caan is hard for all the usual reasons, compelling movie-lovers to think of all the time we’ve spent with his films and feel as if we’ve lost someone not just known, but close to us. But it’s made all the more difficult by the fact that there’s no one in the younger generations that can even come close to filling his shoes. Born to a Jewish butcher who’d come over from Germany, raised on the lively and hardscrabble streets of Sunnyside, Queens, he was so thoroughly identified with blue-collar America that he practically earned an on-screen double citizenship as an honorary Italian.

Continue reading James Caan Remembered: The Essential Films at The Playlist.

This interview was originally conducted in March during Film at Lincoln Center’s Rendezvous with French Cinema program.

This year, Juliette Binoche pulls double duty in Film at Lincoln Center’s Rendezvous with French Cinema program, leading a pair of selections as women with only the most tenuous connection to one another. In Claire Denis’ latest feature, “Both Sides Of The Blade,” Binoche forms one point in a charged love triangle with her ex-husband (Grégoire Colin) and her new man (Vincent Lindon), a rugged rugby pro just on the other side of a prison sentence.

Continue reading ‘Both Sides Of The Blade’: Juliette Binoche Talks Trust With Director Claire Denis, “Warm Pool” Sex Scenes & More at The Playlist.

This interview was conducted in March during Film at Lincoln Center’s Rendez-vous with French Cinema.

The incomparable Claire Denis has come to New York City for Film at Lincoln Center’s Rendez-vous with French Cinema, where her latest feature “Both Sides of the Blade” (formerly known as “Fire“) has been set for its US premiere. The third collaboration between the director and her recent muse Juliette Binoche, the drama finds the mature yet sensual Sara torn between men — her fresh-out-the-clink amour Vincent Lindon and her ex Grégoire Colin — as well as the versions of herself they represent.

Continue reading Claire Denis Talks ‘Both Sides Of The Blade,’ Working With Juliette Binoche Again & More [Interview] at The Playlist.

“Flux Gourmet,” the new smorgasbord of sensation from Britain’s preeminent oddball Peter Strickland, is all about personal expression (read our review). And not just in the artistic sense, though the film does take place at the prestigious Sonic Catering Institute, where experimental music groups receive funding and support for their work generating blizzards of feedback by plugging modular synthesizers into food. The characters are expressed in the same way a dog’s glands might be, stretched to their limits so that the pent-up stuff festering inside them can get out.

Continue reading ‘Flux Gourmet’: Peter Strickland On Taboos, Kink & Finding The Dignity In Flatulence & Gastronomical Problems [Interview] at The Playlist.