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“Nothing Can’t Be Undone By a Hotpot” is not only the best movie title of the year so far, but also a no-frills Chinese whodunit about a pile of stolen cash, a human body, and a long line of dirty laundry. The cash and the body present themselves early on in this sugary Agatha Christie-style […]

“Poolman,” is a character comedy about oddball Los Angelenos that doubles as a spoof of 1940s detective movies. Pine also cowrote (with Ian Gotler), co-produced, and plays the title character, Darren Barrenman. Darren is a big-bearded, long-haired, talkative, thoroughly goofy pool cleaner who lives in a tiny trailer right next to the pool that he

Police brutality is a subject that never seems to leave the news. There’s too many instances, too many stories from around the country pointing to a larger abuse of state-sanctioned power. Some headlines bubble up to national attention, even those that don’t will leave marks on the community where it happened. In “Power,” documentarian Yance

Letitia Wright gives a quietly powerful performance in “Aisha” as a young Nigerian woman seeking asylum in Ireland and struggling to overcome one bureaucratic obstacle after another. Writer-director Frank Berry’s film never devolves into melodrama–if anything, it may be understated to a fault–but he grounds her plight in an authentic mixture of daily frustrations and

One of the pleasures of being a critic is getting assigned to review a film you might not otherwise have seen. 2021’s “The Dry” was one of those, a taut moody drama/thriller based on Jane Harper’s best-selling novel (the first in a series). It starred Eric Bana as Melbourne cop Aaron Falk who returned to

Three people sit down to dinner at a remote cabin in the woods. Before they eat, they fold their hands and say grace. But they are not thanking God; they are thanking the cabin itself, which they have given the Biblical name of Lazareth, and which Lee (Ashley Judd) describes as their source of protection,

Black people are the architects of American culture. The hip verbiage many young people speak, the music they consume, and even the most influential art among what could be called hipsters are derived from Black people. Our distinctive perception of the world has become a pavement for creativity, and social media is no exception. During

“Ticket to Paradise” starring George Clooney and Julia Roberts and “Shotgun Wedding” starring Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel. Most recently, “Anyone But You,” starring Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell, got rave reviews and made bank at the box office. So it was about time a watered-down Netflix version of this new sub-genre emerged. Enter “Mother

In 1964, Robert Rauschenberg won the coveted Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale, an international exhibition of contemporary work. The documentary “Taking Venice” is about the behind-the-scenes maneuvers that resulted in Rauschenberg taking the prize. Director Amei Wallach, an art critic and specialist in fine arts documentaries (she also did “Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Enter

When Rupert Wyatt’s 2011 prequel “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” revived a five-decade-old franchise one that spanned books, films, TV series, and comics since the ’60s it did so with a refreshing commitment to a powerful, timeless story: simple but not simple-minded, deeply emotional but far from corny. Portrayed via groundbreaking performance capture