With her outstanding athletic achievements and outsized ego, Diana Nyad seems like the perfect subject for filmmakers Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi to explore. The married documentarians, who earned an Academy Award for their jaw-dropping 2018 film “Free Solo,” have always been drawn to extremes, to the limits of the human body’s physical and mental capabilities. Nyad, the legendary long-distance…

The other night I was channel surfing and I stopped for a few minutes on TCM’s screening of “Friedkin Uncut.” A picture I’d enjoyed, and reviewed in another venue, and made for pleasant revisiting while I was killing a little time. I saw the section where Quentin Tarantino reflected on the axiom that casting was 90 percent…

The most gripping aspects of “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” don’t even have to do with the actual Hunger Games themselves. They come later, in part three of this lengthy prequel, based on the 2020 novel by Suzanne Collins. Sure, there’s some fascination in seeing this early incarnation of the games, set…

John Woo’s new film is a revenge thriller with such a predictable plot that one can imagine the first multicellular organisms distributing an electrochemical version of it to each other through osmosis. It’s also one of Woo’s best, and one of the most deliriously cinematic movies of the year. If ever there were a movie that demonstrated the idea that…

Every year during the holiday season residents of Southern California flock to East Acacia Avenue in El Segundo, affectionately known as Candy Cane Lane, to see the neighborhood’s elaborate decked out halls, a tradition that dates back to 1949. This of course makes the perfect setting for a manic Christmas film about neighborly competition. However,…

Does crime pay? In the world of François Ozon’s fluffy period farce, it certainly can. When aspiring actress Madeleine Verdier (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) visits a famous producer’s house, the meeting goes badly, and she leaves with an awful story of the man’s attempted assault. She tells all to her fellow down-and-out roommate, best friend, and aspiring lawyer…

It’s not easy to make an intense thriller about things that happen every day. But when one appears, it’s glorious.  Ilker Çatak’s “The Teacher’s Lounge” is glorious. It’s probably the best thriller of this type since “Uncut Gems,” another movie where just watching realistic characters making bad decisions was so nerve-wracking that it made you want…

“Do you see the wolves in this picture,” Ernest Burkhardt (Leonardo DiCaprio) reads aloud as he works his way through a children’s book early in Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.” The wolves aren’t really hidden at all, and they won’t be in the film that follows either, a masterful historical drama about evil operating…

For all the pre-release speculation about how analog epic-maker Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” would re-create the explosion of the first atomic bomb, the film’s most spectacular attraction turns out to be something else: the human face.  This three-plus hour biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) is a film about faces. They talk, a lot. They listen. They react to…

Rich in atmosphere but short on substance, director and co-writer Gareth Edwards’ film has the look and tone of a serious, original work of art, but it ends up feeling empty as it recycles images and ideas from many influential predecessors. The movie is always spectacular to watch, thanks to dazzling visuals from cinematographers Greig Fraser (“Dune,” “The…

“May December” starts with a flurry of confusing activity in two different locations. A glamorous woman (Natalie Portman) checks into a boutique hotel, murmuring into her Bluetooth. Another woman (Julianne Moore) is in the final stages of planning a get-together at her waterfront home. She opens the fridge and stares into it. The camera then…

Alexander Payne loves his characters in Holdovers’. You can feel it in every frame, every line delivery, and every plot choice. And in an age of increasing cynicism, I think many people will love them too. Payne bounces back from the disastrous “Downsizing” by reuniting with the star of arguably his most beloved film, “Sideways.” Paul Giamatti gets…

Ridley Scott’s big-budget war epic “Napoleon” is a series of accomplished battle sequences looking for a better story to connect them. Once again, Scott’s craftsmanship is on full display here, but it’s in service of a deeply shallow screenplay, one that hits major events in the life of its subject with too little passion or…

In many ways, “The Killer” is exactly what you’d expect from a David Fincher movie centered on a hired assassin: a detail-rich procedural about what a hitman is forced to do as his calculated world implodes. And by telling this story of a deadly perfectionist who repeats phrases like “Forbid Empathy” to keep himself centered, Fincher leans…

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is the story of an eccentric older man who embarks on a risky enterprise. Broadbent has another grumpy wife here: after Helen Mirren in The Duke, Penelope Wilton (pictured below with Broadbent) plays Maureen, a sour woman with little to bring joy to her days. His Harold is a quiet man, living modestly…

Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” is unquestionably one of the best films of the year. Bong has made several films about class (including “Snowpiercer” and “Okja”), but “Parasite” may be his most daring examination of the structural inequity that has come to define the world. It is a tonal juggling act that first feels like a satire—a comedy of…

When do you know a relationship is real? Is it when you exchange glances that last a little too long so you can stare into each other’s eyes? Is it when you can’t stop talking to each other? Is it when you two do something together that feels more special than usual? Or is it…

David Duchovny (“The X-Files”) returns to network TV in the role of Sam Hodiak, a WWII vet in 1967 Los Angeles. As written, he’s the old-fashioned cop, the one who thinks free love and copious drugs only lead to crime. As played, he’s got a bit too much of that Duchovny swagger, never quite selling the…

“Shoot to Kill” is yet another example, rather late in the day, of the buddy movie, that most dependable genre from the early 1970s. The formula still works. Two characters who have nothing in common are linked together on a dangerous mission, and after a lot of close calls they survive, prevail and become buddies….

After British actor Dirk Bogarde’s rise to stardom in the light comedy “Doctor in the House” in 1954, he began alternating starring roles in comedies and dramas, supplementing the humorous “Doctor” series with more-serious things like “The Spanish Gardiner,” “A Tale of Two Cities,” “Song without End,” “The Servant,” “Darling,” “The Fixer,” “Death in Venice,”…

Ida Lupino is the great director of noirs, thrillers and message pictures from the 1950s – an inspired film-maker to compare with Nicholas Ray and Robert Siodmak. She combined it with being a producer, a distributor and, most importantly of all, a star, directing herself in this fierce, extraordinarily potent drama, which candidly delivers its…

t midnight, when all is well (and the governor’s daughter has finally recovered from an illness), pirates strike, storming the official’s estate to steal jewelry, clothing, all manner of valuables, and women. But despite a successful looting, all Captain Jamie Waring (Tyrone Power) can think about is Captain Henry Morgan (Laird Cregar), who is to…

The first thing I noticed were the tones of the voices, low, flat and weary. Just like people should sound after the 12-hour flight from San Francisco to Paris. They are happy to be in Paris, but would be happier to be in bed. This was where they spent their honeymoon, 20 years ago, and…

His character, Narvel Roth, works at a high-end botanical garden in an unnamed town (the movie was shot in New Orleans and New York, and the gorgeous flowers seen suggest upstate while the hanging oak trees suggest Louisiana). It’s the private estate of Sigourney Weaver’s Norma Haverhill, with whom the taciturn but always candid Narvel has…

Some memories are too painful for us to carry day to day. There are compartments in our minds where we store our heaviest memories to protect ourselves from despair. This is especially true for traumatic events—happenings so large there’s no control over our reactions. Some people can move on without remembering, but for others, the answers…

Hancock’s work seems to be castigating the very concept of even making a movie about monsters like Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. He returns multiple times to the idea that these murderers became superstars and introduced the film by telling the story of how Gladys Hamer, the widow of one of the men who shot…

Overseen and conceived by the Russo Brothers of Marvel fame, the “Extraction” films are an example of a dwindling breed: the big-budget, super-violent adventure. Whether the main character is named John Rambo, Jason Bourne or John Wick, he’s a variant on a type: the prolific killer who’d prefer not to kill anymore but keeps getting pushed back…

“Gone Girl” is art and entertainment, a thriller and an issue, and an eerily assured audience picture. It is also a film that shifts emphasis and perspective so many times that you may feel as though you’re watching five short movies strung together, each morphing into the next. At first, “Gone Girl” seems to tell…

There’s a lot of empty space in “Hypnotic,” a doofy, though never boring sci-fi thriller about a Texas cop, played by Ben Affleck, who stumbles upon a conspiracy of mind-controlling crooks. Or he seems to stumble upon them. Reality buckles and warps around our troubled hero, whose daughter has already gone missing before the movie starts….

“Fast X” improves greatly when Momoa’s Dante Reyes begins his plan to torture Dom and his furious family. Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej (Ludacris), and Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) head off to Rome on a mission, but it’s a trap designed by Reyes, the son of Hernan Reyes, who was killed when Dom and company rolled a…

From Stories to Action From Stories to Action is a deep dive into the storytelling skills of ideation, prototyping, and iteration. This seminar will teach you how to frame your ideas as experiments and bring others in on your vision of the future. Use experimentation to learn from failure and move from incremental to radical innovation….

Four brilliant, accomplished, gorgeous female actors play four friends who take a bachelorette trip to Italy in this dumb, dull, dud of a waste of their time and ours. I’ll bet the actors had a lot more fun when they were just hanging out between scenes than anyone will in watching the movie. In one…

James Cameron wants you to believe. He wants you to believe that aliens are killing machines, humanity can defeat time-traveling cyborgs, and a film can transport you to a significant historical disaster. In many ways, the planet of Pandora in “Avatar” has become his most ambitious manner of sharing this belief in the power of cinema. Can…

Set in the 1944 ruins dotting the Finnish landscape during World War II, the deliriously fun violence of the extravagant exploitation war flick “Sisu” is deeply nationalistic. Painted in the surprisingly reverent iconography of the prospector, the grizzled, bearded Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila)—fashioned in a simple woolen shirt and suspenders—exists out of place and time when…

What Story Are You Living? Explore with Peter de Kuster the power of the stories you tell yourself. With the concept of archetypal stories Peter explores with you the deep, unconscious patterns in the ways we perceive, organize, and interpret the events of our lives. A wide variety of these shared human themes are reflected…

For about half of “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant,” a big, explosive Afghanistan-set war flick, the bombastic director nearly forgets that his name is attached to the film’s title. Instead, the movie plays more like the second half of its clunky title; it’s initially a pensive, self-aware story of a rugged American Sergeant named John Kinley (Jake…

The “movie star,” that mysterious creature whose blinding charisma pulls everyone into its irresistible orbit, is becoming an endangered species. That makes Jennifer Lopez—a movie star par excellence—the onscreen equivalent of a majestic snow leopard. Lopez can easily carry a film on her own, and her latest project, “The Mother,” is lucky to have her.  Like most…

Charles Neider’s novel, The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones, is the source of the tellingly direct screenplay. It is the brooding, deliberate tale of a young man (Marlon Brando) consumed by a passion for revenge after he is betrayed by an accomplice (Karl Malden) in a bank robbery, for which crime he spends five years…

Ten years ago, David Grann’s article “Trial by Fire” appeared in the New Yorker, with the subhead: “Did Texas execute an innocent man?” Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in 2004 for murdering his three children by arson in 1991. Grann painstakingly digs through the shoddy investigation, the rushed trial, Willingham’s appeals (Willingham never pled guilty), and…

 “A Love Song,” the debut feature from Max Walker-Silverman, takes place in a storybook America. That is, an America in which threat and menace are absent, where folks get along in an easy, considered, practically loping kind of way. Colorado-set, in the middle of a very sparsely populated and largely sere campground, it posits a life…

“Montana Story,” about a brother and sister coming to terms with tragic family secrets during a road trip, is a throwback to an era of independent cinema in which an intimate story about people involved in situations that could actually happen could get seen on big screens in art house cinemas, a type of institution that…

“Hurt people hurt people,” often used in the context of empathy or forgiveness, is a valid statement about how patterns repeat unless people take steps to understand and change them. But it is also true that in some cases, only hurt people can help other hurting people. Their lived experience gives them credibility in sharing…

Fred Zinnemann’s direction is solid handling of motion picture dramatics; a study in building scenes, developing characters and molding the parts into cohesive, gripping drama that is spiced with action, rounded people and humor. To back his direction he had an exceptionally fine screenplay by Daniel Taradash, who translated into visual movement, without clutter, the…

Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers” might be meant as a warning about where we were headed, We are becoming a society more interested in crime and scandal than in anything else – more than in politics and the arts, certainly, and maybe even more than sports, unless crime is our new national sport. If that’s…

HERMAN MELVILLE’S famous story of a man’s dark obsession to kill a whale, told with tremendous range and rhetoric in his great novel, “Moby Dick,” has been put on the screen by John Huston in a rolling and thundering color film that is herewith devoutly recommended as one of the great motion pictures of our…

For his directorial debut, Michael B. Jordan chose to take on “Creed III,” the latest film in the “Rocky” spinoff franchise and the ninth picture overall in the beloved boxing saga. He’s also directing himself in the process, as he returns once again to the titular role of champion fighter Adonis Creed, son of Apollo. And he’s…

Raine Allen-Miller’s directorial debut “Rye Lane” made waves at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and arrives on Hulu this week. The movie follows Dom (David Jonsson), Yas (Vivian Oparah), and their fateful meeting in the gender-neutral restroom at an art exhibit. What begins as a thorny meet-cute turns into the longest unofficial first date ever,…

Sandler returns as Nick Spitz, an NYC police officer who has hung up traditional police work to become a crime solver with his wife Audrey (Jennifer Aniston). After the chaotic action of the original, they’ve become private dicks, solving crimes for a fee, but they’re struggling to make it work. A quick-cut prologue that feels…

Tori and Lokita call each other brother and sister. Biologically, it’s not true. Emotionally it’s more true than anyone around them could know. Their relationship is the core of “Tori and Lokita,” a tight, heartrending social realist drama from Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, who’ve worked in the genre for decades and do it better than almost anyone else. Tori…