The human drama of the Asteroid City portion of the film, which finds Augie, his father-in-law Stanley (Tom Hanks), and the Steenback children, among others, negotiating with awful grievance, is interrupted by not one but two visitations by an alien spacecraft. The new knowledge of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe solves nobody’s problems—it just … Read more
Jay Moore (Micah Stock) is a small-town idiot running a dumb scam on his employers and customers at a sub sandwich shop. Instead of ordering the corporate-mandated supplies from the company that owns the chain, he gets expired products from a local grocery store for cheap. A higher markup means more profit, but the deal … Read more
Medical professionals would usually advise parents of intersex children that they were better off raising their offspring as a “boy” or a “girl” to make things easier on the child and their family. Whose ease was really being prioritized, though? Not that of the children, who would then have to spend most of their youth, … Read more
Like many boys my age—okay, maybe not—I was a big Dalí fan in the late 1960s. I’m still awestruck by his 1931 painting The Persistence of Memory—yup, the melting clocks one—not just because of the genuine numinosity of the image but the craft. It really is meticulous, and on such a small canvas! It’s only … Read more
This is the premise of Ted Geoghegan’s latest movie. “Brooklyn 45” takes place entirely on one set, the front room of the brownstone, and it unfolds in real time like a play. Billed as a supernatural horror film, “Brooklyn 45,” which Geoghegan also wrote, is more than a strict genre label would suggest. Ghosts and … Read more
Earlier models of the format, like John Lee Hancock’s “The Founder” and David O. Russell’s “Joy,” were just hints at a growing interest in the lives of those behind well-known products and corporations, which seem to have grown in the ensuing years of inflation and economic insecurity—not too dissimilar to the current spate of movies … Read more
With her feature debut, director Oakley uses an incredible amount of detail in bringing to life the characters she’s written and the painstaking efforts to color code her sets, costumes, and lighting to get just the right emotional tone and shades of ’80s pastels. Her style is reminiscent of another British filmmaker, Joanna Hogg, who … Read more
But it’s ultimately not about basketball, or even sports. It’s about what happens to a group of close friends when one of them turns out to be so great at his favorite thing that it would be a sin not to let him move on in life and keep doing it at the level his … Read more
It is frustrating to see Jina’s creators try to pull their stubborn antiheroine out of the corner that she finally realizes she’s painted herself into. Until then, Jina occupies a cramped emotional pocket universe of her own. Working this routine—work, smoke, lunch, more work, then a microwaveable meal and TV before bed—can relieve everyday problems. … Read more
Schwarzenegger also says nothing about his abusive father Gustav’s voluntary service with the Nazis, presumably because he flicked away that association in his 2012 memoir, Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story. People only bring up the past when they want to smear you, Schwarzenegger suggests in footage from a 2003 press conference. (“You know, … Read more