Reel Encounters

There’s an allure to ambiguity in art that A24’s “Civil War” constantly seems aware of.

What a coincidence that Matthew Vaughn’s action blockbuster comedy “Argylle” arrived to streaming on Apple TV+ at the tail-end of last week, the same week that saw online film enthusiasts grappling with the leaked industry responses from the March 28 screening of Francis Ford Coppola’s upcoming “Megalopolis”.

It’s unlikely that many are tuning into the latest film in the MonsterVerse franchise, for the human characters.

In “Immaculate”, Sister Cecilia (played by rising-star Sydney Sweeney) is a young nun whose new role at a remote Italian convent begins to threaten the limits of her faith, and then her life.

The unexpected thrill of seeing a pudgy panda excelling at expert martial arts were long-gone by the time “Kung Fu Panda” arrived in cinemas in early 2016.

Dennis Villeneuve’s sequel to his 2021 foray into the world of Frank Herbert’s prose opens with the voice offering what seems, at first, to be a helpful reminder of what happened previously for audiences.

Each year, I use the weekend of the Academy Awards to write my last official post on the previous year in film, usually predicated on the relationship with the imminent Oscar winners.

You wouldn’t think that the recent Oscar nominee for Best Picture (Celine Song’s “Past Lives”) has much in common with the Will Gluck romantic-comedy “Anyone But You”, but both films are an unwelcome reminder that contemporary romances keep forgetting the most important thing – a burning romance.

Although every cinematic biopic is liable to be compared to the reality of its subjects, there’s no immediate artistic value in overzealous fidelity to truth in film.

My Top 20 films of 2022 1. “Women Talking” (d. Sarah Polley) 2.

When was the last time two films in a major Oscar category featured varying interpretations of a single character?

Four feature-directorial debuts at this year’s Sundance Film Festivals interrogated dynamics of family – whether filial or parental – offering distinct social commentary while doing them.

The prize-winning documentary features at this year’s Sundance Film Festival suggested an audience, and jury, that were drawn to experimentations in the documentary form on film that sought out a variety of different approaches to what the documentary could be.

Three of the films in the US Dramatic Competition at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival find writers directing their own scripts engaging with socially urgent issues that feel destined to be conversation starters.

When the Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) launched in 1989, it was part of a concerted plan to provide a launching pad for international cinema.

This review contains some mild spoilers Writer/director Rian Johnson would like you to know that very wealthy people are generally awful, exhausting, and immoral.

2022 feels awash with the metatextual on the big-screen, whether direct contemplations on the film industry or more general ruminations on art and artists.

The sequel to 2009’s megahit “Avatar”, this one subtitled “The Way of Water”, arrives in cinemas to a markedly different world than its predecessor.

Mainstream cinema remains preoccupied with the exigencies of history on film, recent or distant.

In 2020, German actress Maria Schrader made her directorial debut with the Netflix miniseries “Unorthodox”, the first Netflix series to be primarily in Yiddish.