Film Reviews
Armageddon Time Review: James Gray’s Coming-of-Age ’80s Drama Proves Unsatisfying
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: James Gray, an experienced outer-borough tour guide, brings us closer to his own Queens past in Armageddon Time, a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age drama (though he says he wasn’t aiming for that genre; more on that later). The film follows 12-year-old aspiring artist Paul Graff (Banks Repeta) as he struggles with school, makes a friend in his classmate Johnny (Jaylin Webb), clashes with his parents Irving (Jeremy Strong) and Esther (Anne Hathaway), and takes solace in the love of his grandfather (Anthony Hopkins). The 1980 presidential contest looms in the background; at one point, kids at a posh private school start an impromptu chant for Reagan at the mere mention of elections, just before an assembly ...
Hellraiser Review: A True Reboot That’s Pretty Darned Good
The Pitch: The eleventh film in the Hellraiser franchise finds a recovering addict named Riley (Odessa A’zion) stealing and unlocking a mysterious puzzle box, which summons sadomasochists from beyond the grave, led by their high priest Pinhead (Jamie Clayton). These mutilated “Cenobites” will drag either Riley or someone she chooses — intentionally or otherwise — into a supernatural dimension where torment and ecstasy are indistinguishable, and eternal. Now it’s up to Riley and her boyfriend Trevor (Drew Starkey) to uncover the mysteries of the box and stop the Cenobites before they drag everyone into a kinky version of hell. Yes, There Are Eleven Hellraisers: Hellraiser may be one of the most famous modern horror movie franchises, but there hasn’t been a theatrical installment in wi...
NYFF Review: Noah Baumbach Delightfully Skewers Our Fear of Death in White Noise
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: Dom LeLillo’s White Noise is one of those “great American novels” long thought to be unfilmable, a scattered, acerbic takedown of late American capitalism and its incessant need to distract from the inevitability of death with movies, culture, conversation, stuff. And honestly, it’s oddly fitting that the filmmaker who’d finally tackle it would be Indie Darling Noah Baumbach himself: Like DeLillo, he too is concerned with the fits and foibles of academia, the crumbling nature of the family unit, the ways we cling to ephemera just to keep ourselves from falling apart. And so it is with this three-part tale of the Gladney clan, a nuclear family about to go metaphorically (and in some ways litera...
Till Digs Into a Deeply Shameful, Deeply American Tragedy: Review
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: The horrific, deeply shameful, and deeply American story of Emmett Till galvanized the civil rights movement with its tragedy: A 14-year-old Black boy from Chicago, visiting relatives in Mississippi, was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered for having the temerity to interact with a white woman, and Emmett’s mother Mamie Till-Mobley (then known as Mamie Till-Bradley) made the momentous decision to have an open-coffin funeral for her son, displaying his body, mutilated by his killers and bloated from being dumped into a river. These images, heavily circulated in Black publications, brought attention to the evils and injustice of U.S. racism — though they were not enough for Till’s killers (who admitted to the cr...
Paul Schrader’s Master Gardener Treads Very Familiar Soil: Review
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: So there’s this stoic-looking man, sitting at a desk in a dark, spartan room, writing in his journal as we hear his thoughts in voiceover. That’s the set-up for Paul Schrader’s Master Gardener, as it was for his previous two films, The Card Counter and First Reformed. This was also the spirit, at least, of many other movies he has written and/or directed over the years, but his most recent unofficial trilogy takes on a ritualistic quality, as if Schrader is performing his version of stations of the cross, on progressively skimpier budgets. The newest iteration stars Joel Edgerton as Narvel Roth, head horticulturist at Gracewood Gardens, and though his routines appear regimented, he also seems closer to peace...
The Nostalgia of Hocus Pocus 2 Only Serves Itself
Hocus Pocus 2, the long-awaited-by-some sequel to the 1993 fantasy comedy horror film rocking the same name, is best summed up with a stray fart joke. A newly resurrected Mary Sanderson (Kathy Najimy), one of the three nefarious Sanderson sisters (Salem witches whose 1600s reign of terror over the town ended by the noose) stumbles into a Walgreens. She and her siblings, Sarah (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Winifred (Bette Midler), are in search of provisions, and lured into entering the pharmacy by the film’s teen heroes. One by one they walk in. Mary, awed by the automatic doors, steps through and immediately, casually, unwarrantedly trumpets her flatulence. End scene. Farts are funny when they have a point. Hocus Pocus 2’s fart has no point. Mary farts because the filmmakers, producers, and ...
The Greatest Beer Run Ever Is a Pretty Likeable Movie, and That’s a Huge Problem: Review
The Pitch: Peter Farrelly is back with his first film since Green Book, a biopic about an average white guy from New York in the 1960s who learned a lot about the world by stepping outside of his comfort zone in the American South, whilst simultaneously charming the more worldly people around him. His new one, The Greatest Beer Run Ever, is a little different: it’s a biopic about an average white guy from New York in the 1960s who learns a lot about the world by stepping outside of his comfort zone in the Vietnam War, whilst simultaneously charming the more worldly people around him. This time, Zac Efron stars as Chickie Donahue, a shiftless merchant mariner who has a lot of friends serving in Vietnam. Chickie resents the cynical attitude the American media and youth culture have towards t...
Chan-wook Park’s Decision to Leave Is a Sizzling Romantic Thriller: Review
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: A mountain climber is found dead at the bottom of one of Busan’s most intimidating peaks. An accident? Probably. But ace Busan detective Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) still finds himself drawn to the man’s Chinese widow, Seo-rae (Tang Wei), with whom he shares a beguiling, unspoken connection. She’s elusive, enigmatic; he grows more obsessed with her the longer he watches her on long stakeouts. And the closer the two get, the harder it is for him to see the woman she truly is — and the harder for her to hide it. The Mist: If there’s one thing you can count on from a Chan-wook Park film, it’s that it will be chock full of surprises. That’s certainly true of Oldboy, Stoker, and The Handmaiden, thre...
NYFF Review: Bones And All Sucks the Marrow Of Its Horrific Premise
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: Something’s a bit off about Maren (Taylor Russell) — when we first meet her, she looks like an ordinary teen just trying to finish high school and fit in with her new environment. But it’s not long before a get-to-know-you sleepover (and a torn-off ring finger) reveals her for who she is: an “eater,” someone with the insatiable need to consume human flesh. Fed up with the constant moving and the pressure of looking after such a dangerous girl, her father (André Holland) abandons her one morning, leaving only her birth certificate and a cassette tape detailing his account of their early years together. The rest, as he narrates, is up to her. Related Video Thus begins her odyssey to track down her long-mi...
The Munsters Review: Rob Zombie’s ‘60s Sitcom Reboot Embraces Its Campy Source Material
The Pitch: Herman Munster, a big goofy lummox made of reanimated dead bodies in the style of Frankenstein’s monster, marries the ghoul of his dreams, a vampire named Lily. But the newlyweds aren’t shacked up in her father The Count’s castle in Transylvania for long before they’re unceremoniously kicked out, and decide to start a new life in America. The Munsters is rock star-turned-horror auteur Rob Zombie’s reboot of the CBS series of the same name, which ran for two seasons in the mid-‘60s, and then staggered around for decades in syndication like the living dead. And while the Netflix film is a prequel, detailing Herman and Lily’s meet cute before the birth of their sitcom son, werewolf boy Eddie Munster, it’s otherwise impressively faithful to the source material’s look and sense of hu...
Bros Refuses to Apologize For The Specifics of Queer Romance (Except When It Does): Review
The Pitch: Bobby Lieber (Billy Eichner) is a successful pillar of the gay community in New York City: He’s got a popular podcast, he’s the director of what’s soon to be the nation’s first LGBTQ+ history museum, and he was just named “Cis White Gay Man of the Year.” The only thing missing is a man in his life, but Bobby isn’t into all that: “Love is not love,” he stresses early on to his friends, rejecting the oft-used gay rights sentiment as a lie to get straight people to treat queer folks like human beings. Instead, he chips away at one awkward Grindr hookup after another. But fortune changes when Bobby runs into hunky estate lawyer Aaron (Luke Macfarlane) at a club; they each clock the other as angry and boring, respectively, and their shared fatigue for the performative, ima...
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story Shines Thanks to a Deadpan Daniel Radcliffe: Review
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival. The Pitch: Based on the 100% true story of comedian/musician/renegade polka king’s rapid rise to superstardom, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is an “unflinching” look at “Weird” Al Yankovic’s chaotic life. From his childhood as a closeted accordion player, to his brief flirtation with the hot underground polka scene, to his excessive rock and roll lifestyle to his artistic struggles, to his tumultuous romance for the ages with Madonna, and his deadly feud with a legendary drug lord, writer/director Eric Appel and co-writer Al Yankovic pull no punches. This is as real and serious as it gets. Related Video Generic Blues: A fake biopic of “Weird” Al Yankovic is most likely a foolproof formula. How wrong can you...
