“The miracle of life can be a messy business,” you hear in “The First Omen,” a stunning prequel to Richard Donner’s timeless horror classic, “The Omen” (1976), about the evildoings of a demonic orphan adopted by a pair of unsuspecting Americans in London. And just like in the recent, Sydney Sweeney-starring religious gaslighting knockout “Immaculate,” […]
In the romantic comedy “Música,” Rudy is a young man who experiences the world through sound. In his ears, everyday noises become symphonies of life, a daily rhythm that distracts him from class and his girlfriend Haley (Francesca Reale). His mother Maria (Maria Mancuso) suggests Rudy date someone from their Brazilian community in Newark, New
The launching pad for Bertrand Bonello’s new picture “The Beast” (“La Bete”) is a 1903 short story by Henry James called “The Beast in the Jungle.” Seen by some James scholars as an autobiographical expression of rue for a life of inaction, it treats the case of John Marcher, who confides in his acquaintance May
Rory Kennedy is a phenomenal interviewer. We’ve seen this before in her other projects like the Oscar-nominated “Last Days in Vietnam,” and it’s the main strength of her new project, HBO’s 4-part “The Synanon Fix.” Her skill set in making people feel comfortable allows former members of the self-help group that turned into a cult
“The Listener” minimalist would be an understatement. Shot a year into the pandemic, it played film festivals in 2022 and is only now getting a proper release. Once you watch it, you’ll see why it wasn’t treated as a potential box office bonanza. It’s sensitive, subtle, and restrained, and asks more of the audience than
“La Chimera” plays like a magical realism version of the classic one-last-heist movie. The core of it ultimately may reveal itself to be somewhat familiar: Newly released from prison for his crimes, a thief returns home to pull off the big job that will finally make him and his friends rich. But through the dreamlike
At first glance, the barge docked on the Seine in Paris near the foot of the Charles de Gaulle bridge seems to be ordinary enough. In fact, the ship, the Adamant, has, since 2010, been the location for a bold attempt by French medical practitioners to provide a new and more emphatic method of caring
After the one-two gut punch of garbage filmmaking that was “Blacklight” and “Memory,” I had just about given up on Liam Neeson, an actor of undeniable quality who seemed to have stopped actually reading scripts all the way through before signing onto projects. Despite its flaws, one can’t say that about Robert Lorenz’s “In the
“Wicked Little Letters,” a new film directed by Thea Sharrock with a very funny script by Jonny Sweet, is based on a tempest-in-a-teapot news story from 1918-1920, a local scandal which made national headlines in England. Rose Gooding, an Irish woman with a small daughter, moved to the small seaside community of Littlehampton, and struck
You may remember a scene in the cult classic “Repo Man” in which, during a high-speed auto repossession, Emilio Estevez exclaims, “This is intense,” and Harry Dean Stanton laconically replies, “Repo man’s always intense.” Same goes for being a big city paramedic, and you might not even need the movies to tell you that. “Asphalt
