Arts & Culture

Score one for going home again. After misfiring with Begin Again, a film that asked us to worry over a disillusioned A&R man’s efforts to coax a folk-pop album out of Keira Knightley, writer-director John Carney has turned back to the striving Irish of Once, his breakout hit. He’s also…

In Where We Stand: Class Matters, bell hooks argues that people with wealth sometimes have a difficult time understanding the fact that they’re wealthy because they know there are others who have more than they do. When watching Amanda Marsalis’ feature film debut, Echo Park, it’s difficult not to think…

What do you get when you make a superhero movie with a male lead but keep your female audience at the forefront in your decision-making? Apparently a box office hit. By now, you’ve probably heard about the wild success of the little superhero film that could: Deadpool. Nobody expected much…

Hardcore Henry screened as a midnight movie at last September’s Toronto Film Festival, and was so ecstatically received that a distributor bidding war ensued. Six months later, the film has hit theaters nationwide and fallen flat, thanks to intensely negative reviews from critics upset by its unceasing violence. It didn’t…

Colonia is not a “thriller,” so let’s get that out of the way. It’s a love story that also happens to be set in one of the most viscerally horrifying cult prisons in history. (The story is “based on true events.”) If that premise sounds jarring to you, you’re not…

Stately, earthy, graphic, riveting: Gabriel Mascaro’s Neon Bull is one of those art-house studies that plops the camera down someplace far from us and, in exquisite long takes, examines the lives that almost seem to just be happening there anyway. No matter how rigorously worked out each shot and its…

Here’s about as convincing an argument as I can imagine for the existence of the modern Hollywood blockbuster. Disney and Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book reinvigorates an oft-told tale with star power, technology and calculated charm. It’s been billed as a live-action remake (it’s too good to be called a…

To create his film Rwanda and Juliet, Canadian filmmaker Ben Proudfoot traveled to Kigali with a movie crew and a plan. There, they followed Andrew Garrod, a former Dartmouth College professor and the co-founder of a decades-old group called Youth Bridge Global that mounts Shakespeare productions in hopes of inspiring…

Here’s a question faced by the creators of almost every superhero adaptation: How do do you pull this off without copying Frank Miller’s Batman? Too many modern superhero dramas — including the Dark Knight films, Arrow, Daredevil and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice — either ape the dour realism…

These days, any new found-footage horror film inherently fights an uphill battle to distinguish itself. It’s been almost 7 years now since Paranormal Activity inspired renewed interest in the genre, and few of the imitators in its wake have managed to recapture its critical or financial success. These low-budget thrillers now…

Each week, we’re recapping the first season of Fuller House episode by episode.  Hurry, Coachella needs you on the main stage! In a world where Fuller House has dropped the Tanner clan into 2016, we can’t even with this episode. Any illusions you may have had about this being a more…

In Karyn Kusama’s newest feature film, The Invitation, a group of old friends gathers in a secluded house in the Hollywood Hills, reuniting after two years of radio silence from their hosts. What follows is slow-burning suspense, testing belief systems and social niceties, under the guise of a dinner party…