Andrea Riseborough and Christopher Abbot star in director Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor
Review by Jessica Carr
With its amazing visuals and effective storytelling, I think Possessor is able to create a riveting cinematic experience. It isn’t a comfortable one by any means, but it’s definitely something you feel viscerally.
Read More
Jim Parsons, Robin De Jesus, Michael Benjamin Washington, and Andrew Rannells star in director Joe Mantello’s adaptation of The Boys in the Band
Review by Ash Baker
The Boys in the Band has been called “a time capsule of a dark period for LGBTQ+ Americans.” So, why open the time capsule now?
Read More
Review by Miranda Barnewall
Women Make Film is not a comprehensive overview of the history of female filmmakers, it is not about the female filmmakers’ personal lives and struggles, nor it is not how female filmmakers’ styles differ from those of men. Instead, it is simply about the films. Its path is not linear with a clear destination, but rather a road trip that meanders and weaves, often much more interested in the side-road forgotten amusements that people often pass by than the popular attractions.
Read More
Review by Michael O’Malley
In terms of mysteries, this isn’t a procedural or a whodunnit; it’s simply a gigantic question mark for us viewers – what on earth is going on? As such, I’m Thinking of Ending Things fits mostly within the subgenre of puzzlebox mysteries, a kind of story where traditional exposition and context are delivered out-of-order or unconventionally, creating initially perplexing situations that viewers must slowly piece together as the story feeds them more and more of the big picture.
Read More
Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves reprise their iconic roles in director Dean Parisot’s Bill and Ted Face the Music
Review by Logan Kenny
Bill and Ted Face the Music is one of the most emotional tributes to family, friendship and the power of creation that I’ve ever seen, and in the current chaos of everything, its sincere optimism and compassion makes things a little easier to bear.
Read More
Steve Coogan, left, and Rob Brydon in The Trip to Greece. The entire Trip series is available on Hulu.
Review by Zach Dennis
It’s difficult to feel much sympathy for these two wildly successful comedians (or at least their alter-egos), but there is a lot of truth in the insecurity evident between the two men.
Read More
Ethan Hawke stars as Nikola Tesla in director Michael Almereyda’s biopic of the inventor
Review by Reid Ramsey
Almereyda and his team want to reflect the fractured inner-mind of their main character, not just retell his life as a movie. It could be the fact that I haven’t been to a theater in months, but my eyes could not get enough of Almereyda’s construction. It is not necessarily a loud movie, but it is a big movie.
Read More
Kate Lyn Sheil stars as Amy in She Dies Tomorrow by Amy Seimetz
Review by Jessica Carr
Director and writer Amy Seimetz has created a movie that not only perfectly encapsulates the anxiety we are all feeling during the pandemic, but also shows an honest portrayal of her own personal struggle with it.
Read More
Review by Courtney Anderson
This project is not only a visual recreation of Beyoncé’s Lion King album, but it’s also a literal re-telling of the Lion King story. In making Black is King, Beyoncé and her team created a real live-action version of the story, breathing new life into The Lion King in a way that fans of Beyoncé have become familiar with in the past couple of years: grand, majestic, and with Black people in the forefront.
Read More
Vin Diesel stars in director David S. F. Wilson’s Bloodshot
Review by Logan Kenny
Vin Diesel is 52 years old, and he’s as fit as you can be at that age, but after a certain point, the stamina and shape it takes to do stunts every scene for months on end runs out – he can’t do all the same shit that he used to do full time. But with Bloodshot, Vin has made a movie in which for 2 hours, his frame is eternal.
Read More
Lin-Manuel Miranda and Daveed Diggs star in a filmed production of Miranda’s hit broadway show
Review by Andrew Swafford
It’s difficult to place a value judgement on the #HamilFilm, as it seems like the people declaring “it is good” and the people declaring “it is bad” often have very different definitions not only of what “good” or “bad” is, but also what “it” is. When I ask myself “Is Hamilton good?,” I think I’m really asking myself three different questions: Is Hamilton a good musical? Is Hamilton a good film? Is Hamilton a good political project? These questions elicit a tricky, often contradictory, mess of responses from me, so for clarity’s sake, I’ll answer them each separately.
Read More
Review by Etan Weisfogel
Jon Bois tells stories — specifically, as the subtitle for his first video series SBNation noted, “true stories that are pretty good.” But often these stories have already been told, experienced live by thousands of fans and broadcast on national television for millions of viewers at home. The dilemma Bois faces is one faced by any person attempting to dramatize, or re-dramatize, the events of a professional sports game. What combination of shots and cuts could possibly compare to the game-winning home run as experienced in its original form, presented in exactly the same manner as a first-inning groundout or a routine fly ball?
Read More
Review by Logan Kenny
The creators of Scoob! have put more effort into being more like everything else on the market for children’s animated films instead of taking the easier and better route of just making a great Scooby Doo movie for a new generation of kids!
Read More
A still from Some Kind of Connection (2020) by Sophy Romvari and Mike Thorn.
Interview by Zach Dennis
Many people are doing their best to process the current state of the world amidst the coronavirus pandemic, and attempting to do anything creative has become impossible. While an onslaught of projects will percolate in the future related to this time in quarantine, it will be difficult to find one that resonates quite like Sophy Romvari and Mike Thorn’s short film, Some Kind of Connection. Cinematary spoke with Romvari and Thorn about making the movie, how they started their romance and then were quickly swept up in a pandemic lockdown, how the collaboration process has helped in the making of Sophy’s films, and what they’re watching and thinking about art in the age of the coronavirus.
Read More
Director Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers stars alongside Violet Nelson in Tailfeathers’s film The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open
Review by Julianna Ramsey
The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open feels less like a story and more like a window – a glimpse into the contentious but tender encounter between two real women, with danger lingering just out of frame.
Read More
Review by Jessica Carr
Films like Tigertail can help audiences everywhere develop stronger empathy for other immigrants and understand their experiences, and I hope they also inspire immigrants to tell their own stories – or entrust those stories to someone close to them so they can share it with the world.
Read More
Mia Goth and Anya Taylor-Joy star in director Autumn de Wilde’s Emma.
Review by Maggie Frank
Taylor-Joy makes a good Emma by communicating as much with her manner as with her delivery. She opens a door with one finger. Her face freezes and falls at her faux pas.
Read More
Kris Hitchen stars in director Ken Loach’s new film Sorry We Missed You
Review by Reece Beckett
Loach’s film is truly upsetting and really quite sickening, but it is his passionate observation of these vile problems that is really quite hopeful; our voice can still be heard, and so long as our voice is heard, change can still be made.
Read More
Review by Courtney Anderson
Birds of Prey has arrived to show us that the DCEU knows how to lean into the wackiness without sacrificing style and tone. Birds of Prey is a flashy, colorful, topsy-turvy blast of a film.
Read More
Review by Andrew Swafford
There’s no breadcrumb trail in Gretel & Hansel. No gingerbread house, either. The menacing old woman at the dark heart of the story lives in a postmodernist isosceles art piece. Rather than being a one-dimensional cannibal, she’s a witch operating by her own lore – her magic powers evident in a pitch-black pigmentation running down her fingers. All this is to say that Gretel & Hansel, the new grimdark fairy tale horror adaptation by Osgood Perkins, is weird.
Read More