Review

I missed Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach’s animated French escapade “Chicken for Linda!” when it premiered at last year’s Cannes, where it played the off-kilter ACID (Association for the International Distribution of Independent Cinemas) showcase. Ten minutes into this wacky yet frustratingly mournful film about a daughter’s angsty relationship with her widowed mother, a slap […]

Thoughtful sentiment cowers at the force of heavy handedness in “A Bit of Light.” Starring Anna Paquin and directed by her husband Stephen Moyer, “A Bit of Light” is adapted from writer Rebecca Callard’s play of the same name. Ella (Anna Paquin) is an alcoholic in recovery, who due to her addiction has lost custody

Both drawn-out and deceptively simple, the trippy French comedy “Yannick” re-imagines a hostage situation as a surreal and very slow-burning farce. It happens to take place in the middle of a bad stage play. The title character, played by Raphael Quënard, interrupts a bizarre, high-strung divorce comedy called “Le Cocu,” or “The Cuckold,” which seems

Dev Patel pours his entire self into “Monkey Man.” Some comes over the sides and the mix might not always be right but there’s an undeniable passion here that comes through in a genre that too often feels like it came off an assembly line. The writer, producer, star, director, and guy who broke a

“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