Review

“The Roundup: Punishment” is the third sequel in a series of Korean cop thrillers featuring a tank-sized boxer nicknamed the “monster cop.” Somehow, these movies aren’t as fun as that suggests. Ma Dong-seok, aka Don Lee, plays Seok-do, the only memorable constant in this episodic action franchise, which began in 2017 with the hit “The […]

If I were to explain to you the setup of Marisa Kavtaradze’s “Slow,” my guess is that it would lead many of you to more or less assume most of what is to follow. However, one of the many nice things about the film, which was Lithuania’s Oscar submission for this year’s International Feature Film

In 1761, a 24-year-old penniless woman named Jeanne Bécu wrote a letter to a “dear friend,” telling him she loved him before getting to the point: “I don’t want to remain a shopgirl, but a little more my own mistress, and would therefore like to find someone to keep me.” She makes her pitch: “It

“Prom Dates,” about a couple of teenage best-bud girls getting in trouble during the run-up to prom, is a raunchy, R-rated but warmhearted teen comedy. It operates in a mode that’s been around for decades but reached its 21st century zenith in “Superbad” and got a social media-era upgrade in “Booksmart.” It was written by

“I’ve been called a witch, a slut, and a murderer. Maybe people confuse me with the characters I play in films… like I’m an empty vessel onto which they project their fantasies and their shortcomings, but I don’t need to settle scores. I’m reclaiming my soul. I write as a woman searching for another adventure.”

Tell me if this sounds familiar: A romantic couple, one American, one British, one the proprietor of a small, very narrow business, happy with family and friends but lonely and a little lost, one a global superstar, but lonely and a little lost. Both are spectacularly beautiful. And there’s a reason the star has to

With the notable exception of “Barbie,” the modern blockbuster can be pretty serious stuff. Whether it’s the dense lore and world-building of “Dune” or “Avatar: The Way of Water,” or the self-serious connected universe of the MCU, blockbusters have often felt like work lately too. This is not to say that some of these films

In middle school, John Green novels were the quintessential YA diaries in which my friends and I indulged. Ferociously consuming his books and feeding our angst and inflated otherness through Margo Roth Spiegelman and Alaska Young, or pining for the love of Hazel and Augustus, the announcement of an adaptation sent us straight to theaters

Sometimes, the revolution is televised. In 1998, an aspiring comedian auditioned for a Japanese TV show that put young people in difficult situations and filmed them for entertainment. By the luck of the draw, he won the chance to pursue fame in the burgeoning realm of reality television. Forced into a studio apartment with no