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It’s incredible that a filmmaker as renowned as Takashi Miike can have a film stealth drop on Netflix. But that’s what happens when you make as many flicks as the director of “Audition,” “13 Assassins,” and “Ichi the Killer” has helmed over his illustrious career. Seriously, there’s a very strong chance he’s on a set […]

Xavier Gens is back with his second stateside release of the year in a film that’s already topped the Netflix charts, the defiantly goofy “Under Paris,” a movie that almost feels like it’s paying homage to the master in its nods to Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” before going full “Sharknado” in an insane final act that

People like to speak about a golden era of movies the precise dimensions of which often shift based on the generation of the speaker when Hollywood made products that were sexier, smarter, and just generally better. Richard Linklater’s “Hit Man” is for them. Like its protagonist’s ability to basically change identities depending on the situation,

On stage, comedians use their words to make their audience laugh, gasp, or think sometimes simultaneously. But what happens when a joke is used against a comedian? It’s one of the many thorny ideas Ally Pankiw’s bold feature debut “I Used to Be Funny” wrestles with over the course of its emotional story. When we

Cate Blanchett’s searing performance in “Tár” left such an indelible impression that, for a while in late 2022/early 2023, people actually thought Lydia Tár was a real person. She is not: The egotistical and tormented conductor is entirely fictional, the vivid creation of writer-director Todd Field. However, many passionate and dedicated female conductors exist, and

In a big city, avoiding eye contact is a survival tool. Looking at the floor, looking down and to the left, a thousand-yard stare that looks straight through whoever is cramming their body into your personal space at that moment: all are necessary to maintain some level of dignity in crowded spaces. The characters in

“Longing” is a remake of an award-winning Israeli film by the same writer/director, Savi Gabizon. It could just as well be called “Grief,” or perhaps the Portuguese term “Saudade,” sometimes described as the feeling of loss for something you never had and never will. Richard Gere plays Daniel Bloch, a never-married, very successful businessman who

I’m not coming out and accusing the writers of “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” of using A.I., a touchy subject in Hollywood these days. But if a computer had written this blockbuster sequel, it wouldn’t turn out much different. Serving as a more direct sequel to 2020’s “Bad Boys for Life” than people might expect,

One of my great great great grandfathers fought for the Union and survived the Battle of Antietam. After his infantry unit was wiped out, he hid under a heap of corpses. As a child, I often found myself thinking about a person doing what he did and then going on to live a normal life,

Daisy Ridley battles jellyfish and the patriarchy with equal pluck and aplomb in “Young Woman and the Sea.” Ridley stars in this compelling biographical drama as Trudy Ederle, the first woman to swim across the English Channel. Ederle accomplished this feat in 1926 nearly a century before the open-water swimming triumph depicted in last year’s