Movies

Finding Nicole continues prolific indie filmmaker Harvey Wallen’s journey in trying to abandon the typecast and the comfort zone of his past films. Wallen is no stranger to the industry, as he has been making movies for quite some time now. In recent years, he has built an ecosystem alongside a slew of collaborators who…

After a couple of years of navigating through the weird yet endearing filmography of Nathan Hill, I’ve grown fond of the actor/producer/director. I love independent movies when they care nothing about the rest of the world, and exist in a subset where standards are taken down. Hill is a creator of worlds, and his uncompromised…

In the wild ride that is The Disinvited, a man grapples with the emotional turmoil triggered by rejection. It is the beginning of Carl’s descent into something dark, unpredictable, and ultimately, tragic. While there are early signs of his possible disconnection with reality, the film never fully exploits this idea until the very ending. Whether…

Ryan Gosling in a scene from ‘Project Hail Mary’ (Photo: Amazon MGM Studios, 2026). If you’ve seen Gravity, Interstellar, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and The Martian, you’ve seen Project Hail Mary. It’s that blatant in how it lifts, calls back, and occasionally winks at the giants of the genre. I found myself clocking the references…

This Jeff Nichol’s film – the first of two 2016 movies directed by his long-time collaborator in which Shannon appeared – gives the audience little initial exposition. Eventually we learn that Roy grew up in the cult, and endured two years watching its leader (Sam Shepherd) raise Alton instead of him. Even before we learn this…

When you have a hit film these days, inevitably the question always arises about a sequel. There’s very little studios love more than a bit of valuable IP, and the pressure to turn standalone stories into franchises, regardless of their suitability, has never been more apparent. After the success of 2019’s Ready or Not (which received positive reviews…

For people of faith who just want to see Bible stories on screen, Fox’s “The Faithful: Women of the Bible” will work. It’s essentially a series of three made-for-TV movies that tell different Old Testament stories from women’s perspectives. The first film, “The Woman Who Bowed to No One,” which was the only one given…

A previous dispatch from this year’s SXSW highlighted how so many of the horror films here seem to be almost existential in their questioning who we want to be in the 2020s as technology continues to redefine the human condition. The funny thing is that several of the comedies this year also contain existential foundations…

My final genre-centered dispatch of SXSW 2026 features three films that take place mostly at single settings, using storytelling devices made famous by everything from J-Horror to “Black Mirror.” They’re a mixed bag of quality, three films that have undeniably interesting premises but vary in how they follow through on those premises. Once again, filmmakers…

“How could human beings do that? The answer was very clear. They believed that what they were doing was right.” The uplifting yet heartbreaking documentary For the Living tries its best to explain something that should be part of the human condition. The principle of empathy, and what stands on the other side of the…