Movies

The Japanese director Koji Fukada had a bit of a breakout at Cannes a decade ago with “Harmonium,” which won a prize in the festival’s Un Certain Regard section, but “Nagi Notes” is his first film in competition. It’s also the best of his movies that I’ve seen: a bit schematic, perhaps, but full of…

When we first meet Ian McKellen’s Julian Sklar, he’s lit by a ring light as he records Cameos in front of an iPhone, ​“signing” each one off by holding an imaginary pen and drawing a signature in the air. Once a much-revered British painter, Julian is long past his glory days. He’s lost his artistic zeal to an…

God, don’t you just hate it when you’re at a fancy cocktail soirée and Wagner’s kids trap you in their sight lines and attempt to rehabilitate the reputation of their father, his work having provided an unwitting soundtrack to the Third Reich? And it’s not just the rightists who are a pain, as there’s nothing worse than…

The last we saw of Kelly Reilly’s Beth and Cole Hauser’s Rip in the series finale of “Yellowstone,” they had just settled into their new home, a ranch in the quiet outpost of Dillon, Montana. For one perfect, sun-dappled moment, it appeared as if Beth and Rip and their teenage ward Carter (Finn Little) might…

The first thing you need to know about “Nemesis,” the latest from “Power” creator Courtney A. Kemp and her partner Tani Marole, is that it is deeply silly. It features lines like a diamond thief saying to his boss, “Call me Sydney Sweeney, because these bitches are all-natural,” or the lead thief telling his crew,…

SXSW London returns for its second edition this June, bringing its multifaceted tangle of film, TV, music, technology and culture back to East London. This year, the festival has made things a little easier by centralising its campus around the Truman Brewery, while also dividing the Screen Festival into six strands: Headliners, Competition, Heartwarmers, Collisions, Shivers…

Early into Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Sundance-anointed filmmaker Kris (Hannah Einbinder) explains to erstwhile scream queen Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson) that she’s been parachuted in to resurrect the ​“zombie IP” that is the teen slasher Camp Miasma franchise because she’s queer. After a raft of progressively worse sequels, an ocean’s-worth of…

Of all the qualities of adulthood, one line from the torch-poem ​‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling permeates the second feature by French actress-turned-auteur, Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet. Anchored by a committed performance from the stalwart Léa Drucker, the film’s deceptively breezy tone is held down by the gravity of her mature grace. Drucker is the embodiment of this line: If…

As a self-professed Romance girlie, I’ve frequently written about the difference between a romantic film/show and a romance novel. That difference isn’t semantics. It comes down to the storytelling, the characterizations, and the thing that Romance readers love most: the tropes. “Bridgerton” was the first to recognize this fact. We haven’t seen that dedication to…

In its thirteenth year, the Chicago Critics Film Festival returned with one of its strongest line-ups to date, featuring multiple sold-out shows and an exciting line-up of in-person guests.  As Managing Editor, Brian Tallerico shared, “As headlines screech about the divide between critics and moviegoers, CCFF serves as a counterargument, bringing together people who write…