Pablo Larraín’s “Spencer” is a haunting reimagining of a tense Christmas holiday in the life of Princess Diana. Knowing this will not fully prepare you for what you’re about to watch. Larraín’s vision is full of dream sequences, internal and externalized pain, metaphor-heavy dialogue, and Kristen Stewart brooding sensationally under various hats and Diana’s signature short bob…

On November 19, 2011, Kenneth Chamberlain took off his medical alert necklace at around 5:30am in much the same way so many of us hit snooze on that first alarm. Half-asleep, he didn’t realize that he had triggered it, and slept through the call from LifeAid asking if he actually needed assistance. Assuming that he…

If you know how many minutes there are in a year, if you recognize at least eight of the Broadway legends who are having Sunday brunch in a diner scene (and if you have seen some of them on stage), and if you are delighted that said diner scene turns into a musical number about…

This movie is billed as “A ‘Sopranos’ Story.” Set in 1967 and the early 1970s, it’s a prequel to the groundbreaking television series that has to serve the function of setting up the characters fans of that series know and, weirdly enough in a way, love. But it’s also got to stand on its own…

The promise of a better life is intoxicating and all-consuming, and thrives in locations of grand economic disparity. “7 Prisoners,” set in Brazil, sketches the limitations and lamentations of such dreaming. There are hierarchies of power that control economies and labor forces, and there is exploitation built into those very hierarchies to maintain said power…

The epic tragedy about the deadly pain medicine Oxycontin, its maker and pusher Purdue Pharma, and America is far from over, but film and TV have started to comprehend the saga for wide audiences. “Dopesick,” a compelling new eight-episode Hulu series from Danny Strong (and executive produced by one of its stars, Michael Keaton), provides a Hollywood version of the story,…

Every day that dedicated Mark Walker (Danny Glover) wakes up, he hopes it’ll be the day the army puts the mental well-being of its soldiers over having boots on the ground. It’s been seven years since September 11th, and despite the American public’s want to leave Iraq, President Bush has instead ordered a surge. For some of…

Clare is a Black woman passing for White. She’s convincing enough to fool a lot of people, including John (Alexander Skarsgård), her vile, racist husband. Before we meet Clare, we follow her old high school classmate, Irene (Tessa Thompson) who, on this particular day, has decided to try her hand at fooling the masses. She…

After months of delays, the 25th official James Bond film is finally here in “No Time to Die,” an epic (163 minutes!) action film that presents 007 with one of his toughest missions: End the era that most people agree gave new life to one of the most iconic film characters of all time. Everyone knows…

Set mostly, though not entirely, in a rural French mountain village, the film kicks off with the disappearance of Evelyne Ducat (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi), a Parisian society woman of some prominence who has been staying at her stylish winter vacation home. Her car has been found abandoned by the side of the road but other than…

It takes prodigious comic gifts to make a loathsome, pathetic character so mesmerizing that you enjoy watching him dig himself into a hole for 90-plus minutes. Jim Cummings, the star, editor, co-writer, and co-director of “The Beta Test,” has those gifts.  Cummings plays Jordan, a remorseless, manipulative Hollywood agent working for a CAA-like behemoth who gets ensnared in a…

Brutal, sad, funny, and disarmingly sweet-natured, “Riders of Justice” is not so much a revenge movie as a movie about revenge. That might seem like a distinction without a difference until you get to the end of this surprising feature from writer/director Anders Thomas Jensen and look back on every place that it has taken you.  The story starts a few…

Rewrite Your Story. Transform Your Business. Transform Your Life. With Peter de Kuster as your Business Story Coach, you’ll increase revenue, decrease doubt, and create the business you’ve always wanted. Through one-on-one coaching, you’ll embark on a personal and professional quest—discovering the story that drives your success and learning how to tell it with clarity,…

“Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy” covers themes of love and betrayal while twisting the narrative in unexpected directions. Broken into three segments related solely by their penchant for role-playing characters, the film takes just over two hours to immerse us in the lives of several women in Japan. Each story ends with a short credits sequence to ensure we don’t waste any…

“The Harder They Fall” is a bloody pleasure: a revenge Western packed with memorable characters played by memorable actors, each scene and moment staged for voluptuous beauty and kinetic power. Jeymes Samuel, who cowrote, directed, and scored the movie, has not just studied the works of the directors he emulates, but understands what they were doing with image…

“Love Is a Dog From Hell” reads the tattoo between Alexia’s breasts, just one of many sprinkling her lanky frame. The tattoo is a red flag to any and all who want to get close to Alexia, not just close to her breasts, but close to her in general. Alexia is the feral and compulsively…

The Polish film “Operation Hyacinth” is set sometime between 1985 and 1987, when the titular secret police action was enforced. Cops were tasked with tracking down known or perceived homosexuals, entering them into a database and often forcing them to sign confessions or out other people. Blackmail and violence were common tools employed by officers and higher-ups….

“You know what it’s like to be a mother,” Dai Mah (Jade Wu) tells Sister Tse (Shuya Chang) near the climax of writer/director Evan Jackson Leong’s “Snakehead.” “You see your faults in your children. You just wish you had done better.” Tse doesn’t yet know what faults she sees in her own daughter; after giving her…

We start on the Island of Møn in 1987. A police officer is called out to a farm, where reports have emerged that a farmer has let his cows escape. This innocuous matter turns into something far more terrifying, when the attending police officer finds three people brutally murdered. In the basement, he finds a…

“No Future” is the kind of movie that presents a challenge to anyone attempting to view it. However, those willing to give “No Future” a chance will find it to be a fairly smart and realistic depiction of two people consumed by grief, guilt, and loss and the misguided ways by which they attempt to come…

“Bergman Island” is the title of a new film from the writer and director Mia Hansen-Løve (“Eden,” “Things to Come”). The movie concerns a filmmaker couple, Chris (Vicky Krieps) and Tony (Tim Roth), who travel to Fårö, the island in Sweden where Bergman lived and worked, to reside for a spell in Bergman’s house, which he had wanted to…

The Forgotten Battle is a well-written, gritty war movie that leans into its characters to deliver three parallel narratives. Those expecting a lot of action will be disappointed but the characters are well written and the way everything collides together naturally at the end serves as a nice way to conclude this film. World War…

Enviously capable of balancing out his rugged side with a sensitive note here or there, nobody calls themselves a “sodbuster,” “cowpuncher” or “saddle bum” quite like actor Sam Elliott. In Conagher, the newest of the three titles that was originally made for TNT in 1991 and co-written by stars Elliott and Katharine Ross, Elliott plays “a…

Michael Mohan’s “The Voyeurs” is fairly good at being trashy. It’s not confident, so much as mighty hip to how Amazon viewers won’t shut off its tap of indulgent horniness mid-stream, and ipso facto the movie feels primarily engineered for provocative rushes—the kind that come from characters doing something outrageous, the kind that come from watching…

 “Together,” a two-character drama from director Stephen Daldry (“Billy Elliott”) and writer Dennis Kelly (“Black Sea,” “Utopia”). Filmed, like pretty much everything at the time of this writing, under lockdown conditions, and pointedly acknowledging that reality, it’s the story of a couple whose disintegrating relationship is rekindled, reconsidered, and mercilessly dissected while they and their ten-year old special needs son…

Character actor Tom Skerritt takes the lead for once in this gentle, melancholic drama about an older man who, while overwhelmed by suicidal thoughts, figures some things out for himself. Fans of David Guterson’s source novel will probably get it, but everyone else might need a moment to get the picture. There’s not much conflict in “East of…

Ultimately, the narrative of Antoine Fuqua’s “The Guilty” operates largely from the motto of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” And yet, to be fair, screenwriter Nic Pizzolatto (“True Detective”) does add a few different notes of commentary on American policing and ignorant masculinity that slightly distinguish his take thematically, and Jake Gyllenhaal delivers as one would expect, proving again…

Paul Schrader’s 2017 “First Reformed” worked up such an apocalyptic fury and resolve that it seemed, in some way, like a Last Film. But the writer/director is neither dead nor apparently ready for retirement, so what is he going to do but continue making films? This one, “The Card Counter,” starring Oscar Isaac in the title role…

Can you put a price tag on a life? “Worth” delves into that question by telling the story of the 9/11 Victims’ Compensation Fund. The fund was created by an act of Congress to ease the suffering of families who lost loved ones in the attack and (perhaps more importantly, from the government’s standpoint) keep them from…

Director Nia DaCosta’s “Candyman” is being sold as a “spiritual sequel” to the 1992 horror classic starring Virginia Madsen and Vanessa Williams. This iteration ignores the two actual sequels to writer/director Bernard Rose’s adaptation of a Clive Barker short story, instead picking up in present day Chicago. The Cabrini Green where Madsen’s Helen Lyle character met her grisly fate is no more;…

“Cry Macho,” which Clint Eastwood directed from a long kicking-around script by Nick Schenk and N. Richard Nash, and which began as a 1975 novel by Nash (and this movie adapts it very loosely, to say the least), will end up one of his more unusual films. Its title and trailer suggest a potentially blistering, and likely rueful, action…

At first glance, you might think that writer/director Sian Heder’s “CODA” is all about predictable beats you’ve seen countless times before. After all, it tells a pleasantly familiar coming-of-age tale, following a talented small-town girl from modest means with dreams to study music in the big city. There’s an idealistic teacher, a winsome crush, moving rehearsal…

Sweet Girl, which sounds more like a reality show about a teenage baker, in fact refers to Rachel (Isabelle Merced), the daughter of Ray (Momoa), a blue-collar family man who unravels after a devastating tragedy. The matriarch of the family dies of cancer after a new drug was abruptly removed from the market, the result…

The Aretha Franklin biopic, “Respect” ends with footage of the real Queen of Soul bringing down the house at the Kennedy Center Honors tribute to Carole King. Re plays the piano and sings “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” the composition King co-wrote. At the climax of this performance, Re tosses her fur coat to the…

Beneath the weathered baseball cap and bushy goatee, the parade of plaid shirts and the polite replies of “Yes, ma’am,” there’s a whole lot more to Bill Baker. Sure, he listens to old-school country in his pickup truck while driving between manual labor gigs and he never fails to pray before a meal, even if…

Hopkins gives a moving, Oscar-winning turn as a man with dementia in a film full of intelligent performances, disorienting time slips and powerful theatrical effects “Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!” says King Lear, a plea which is overwhelmingly sad because it can never be heard by anyone with the power to…

Director Dominic Cooke and screenwriter Tom O’Connor tell the “based on true events” story of Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch). Wynne was a British businessman who, from 1960 and 1962, smuggled thousands of pieces of intel out of Russia before he was captured, imprisoned, and tortured for two years by the KGB. Assisting him in his role as…

The heart-pounding mystery thriller, My Son, is an English-language remake of the 2017 French film of the same name (Mon Garcon in French). Both films were written and directed by the ace filmmaker Christian Carion. The thrilling narrative follows a separated husband and wife who reunite to find their missing son. While the drama fails to…

Ridley (Milan Burch) is dealing with the loss of his father, who died one year ago as a hero while saving three people. His mother, Gloria (Victoria Hill), decides to leave New York and move to Western Australia, where the two can start fresh and live with Ridley’s grandfather, Spencer (Bill Nighy). Naturally, Ridley would…

Not every man would like to be James Bond, but every boy would. In one adventure after another, he saves the world, defeats bizarre villains, gets to play with neat gadgets and seduces, or is seduced by, stupendously sexy women (this last attribute appeals less to boys younger than 12). He is a hero, but…

Celie is a woman cruelly treated by the world, a shy, frightened little creature whose life consists mostly of eluding the men who want to rape and beat her. Her eventual flowering provides one of the most joyous experiences I have had at the movies; the scene where she is coaxed and persuaded and finally…

‘So that was school and this is the world,” says Becky Sharp, on her way to London with the “too good to be true” Amelia Sedley, who has taken pity on Sharp and invited her to stay for the week. After that, Miss Sharp will take up her new job as a governess in “darkest…

“Supernova” is a moving story of two men who are deeply in love but will soon not know each other. One of them is aware that he’s at the precipice of the final stage of dementia, losing many of his abilities to comprehend the world around him. He won’t recognize his husband’s face or name….

“The Count of Monte Cristo” is a movie that incorporates piracy, Napoleon in exile, betrayal, solitary confinement, secret messages, escape tunnels, swashbuckling, comic relief, a treasure map, Parisian high society and sweet revenge, and brings it in at under two hours, with performances by good actors who are clearly having fun. This is the kind…

Trump gets a second term, robots perform sexual favours and humans can upload their minds to the cloud in Davies’ thrilling new show, which follows one family from 2019 to 2034 The new six-part drama follows the fortunes of three generations of one Manchester family, the Lyons, from 2019 through to 2034. The intertwined personal lives…

There is a moment in “Face/ Off” when Sean Archer (John Travolta), a member of a secret FBI anti-terrorist team, confronts the comatose body of Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage), his archenemy, in the hospital. “You’re keeping him alive?” he asks incredulously. “Relax,” says a medical man. “He’s a turnip.” To prove it, he puts out…

What a beguiling, confounding film “Pig” is. From start to finish, it never moves as you might expect it to. A long-haired forest hermit named Rob (Nicolas Cage) gets bloody revenge against the criminals who kidnapped his truffle-hunting best friend. There are aspects of it that cannot be said to “work” in any conventional filmmaking sense, but…

Mohamedou Ould Salahi spent 14 years at Guantanamo Bay despite never being charged with a crime. Picked up shortly after 9/11, he was accused of being one of the key recruiters for the attacks despite almost no evidence that he was directly related. One of the hijackers spent a night on Salahi’s couch, and in…

Directed by Jean-Paul Salomé from a script he wrote with Antoine Salomé, adapting a popular novel by Hannelore Cayre (which appeared here with its title translated to “The Godmother”), “Mama Weed” has a narrative that progresses with the inexorable logic of dominoes falling. Huppert plays Patience, who works as a translator for the narcotics division of a French police…

Within a few days of each other, I saw again “Schindler’s List” and “Geronimo,” and it occurred to me that both films are about Holocausts, about entire populations murdered because of their race. But Americans are not quick to describe our treatment of the Indians as genocide, and even a somewhat revisionist film like “Geronimo”…