Category: Review
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‘The Killing Fields’ Disrupts the White-Savior Trope
Pulling from the experiences of a pair of journalists covering the Khmer Rouge regime’s atrocities, Roland Jaffé’s 1984 drama has some emotional limitations and character-based problems but is impressively unwilling to make its real-world horrors more palatable.
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‘Resident Evil’ Gets the Job Done
Zach Cregger’s adaptation of the popular Japanese video game — itself already the basis of a lucrative six-part movie franchise — is proficient to a fault.
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‘Our Land’ is a Different Kind of Courtroom Drama
Lucrecia Martel’s first foray into documentary filmmaking uses a much-publicized trial as a conduit to examine her native Argentina’s corrosive colonialist history.
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‘Biker Boyz’: When a Miscast Lead Spoils a Great Premise
Reggie Rock Bythewood’s 2003 action movie plops you into an intriguing world about which you immediately want to know everything. But its central performance drags it all down.
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‘Urban Cowboy’ is a Country-Fried Cash-in
James Bridges’ handsomely shot 1980 drama is fairly openly indebted to 1977’s ‘Saturday Night Fever.’
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Memory and Family Are Not to Be Trusted in ‘Romería’
Now playing on The Criterion Channel, Carla Simón’s elegant new movie fictionalizes her genealogical history with productive reticence.
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The Perennially Relevant ‘Ladybug Ladybug’
The frustrations at the heart of Eleanor and Frank Perry’s 1963 Cold War drama have barely faded.
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The Meticulous Empathy of ‘Descendant’
In 2019, a sunken slave ship was discovered, after years of speculation, in Alabama’s Mobile River. A great 2022 documentary, ‘Descendant,’ powerfully probes the aftermath.
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‘Sherman’s March’ is Pretty Exhausting
It’s easy to see why Ross McElwee’s 1986 documentary was so influential. It can also be enervating.
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‘The Hamptons’ is a Compulsively Watchable Nightmare
Barbara Kopple’s 2002 documentary saps the mythic vacation destination of any romanticization.
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The Triumph and Tragedy of ‘The Joy Luck Club’
Wayne Wang’s 1993 adaptation of the homonymous Amy Tan novel was a breakthrough that deserved to trigger more of an industry ripple effect than it ultimately did.
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‘The End of Oak Street’ is Entertainingly Derivative
Plus: The much-delayed Looney Tunes comedy ‘Coyote vs. Acme’ is, for the most part, worth the wait. (For 425)
