Festivals TIFF 2021: Violet is an on-the-nose exploration of Hollywood anxiety By: Soham Gadre Olivia Munn's spirited performance elevates what otherwise feels like a moralistic, obvious self-help treatise on trauma and accountability.
Festivals TIFF 2021: Naomi Watts tries to outrun disaster in the horrendous Lakewood By: Peter Sobczynski Phillip Noyce and Naomi Watts team up for a preposterous, formulaic high-concept thriller that does nothing tasteful with its premise.
Festivals TIFF 2021: Titane is a fever dream best served cold By: Sarah Kurchak Julia Ducourneau's followup to her stunning debut Raw makes for brutal, beautiful, brilliant body horror.
Festivals TIFF: Mothering Sunday’s intimate sensuality and strong character work shine despite some rough structural work. Mothering Sunday sees star Odessa Young give a stupendous performance of a young woman's birth as a writer and passionate love.
Festivals TIFF: The Mad Women’s Ball is sadly far from a blitz The Mad Women's Ball, Melanie Laurent's adaptation of a novel about a young woman's incarceration in a cruel asylum, is disappointingly flat.
Reviews Come from Away’s warmth is undermined by key creative choices By: B.L. Panther Come from Away, a musical true story about a town that took in 38 planes in the wake of 9/11, undercuts its warmth with its creative choices.
Festivals TIFF: Listening to Kenny G is about as pleasantly inoffensive as his music By: Peter Sobczynski Penny Lane's profile on the smooth jazz superstar can't quite muster up enough energy to make its explorations of his notoriety (good and bad) sing.
Festivals TIFF: Dear Evan Hansen is a confounding adaptation of the stage musical By: Sarah Kurchak Ben Platt's age is the least of our problems in Stephen Chbosky's misguided adaptation of the already-misguided musical Dear Evan Hansen.
Reviews Malignant is a mess, but an entertaining mess By: Gena Radcliffe James Wan directs a gory collection of homages that somehow pulls together into a good time.
Reviews HBO’s Scenes From a Marriage tests the ties that bind By: Beau North Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain wring brutal truths from the complexities of matrimony in this update of the Ingmar Bergman classic.
Reviews Doogie Kameāloha, M.D. is stricken with a severe case of over-familiarity By: Lisa Laman Disney+'s latest revival is too beholden to the past for its own good.
Recap Ted Lasso “Man City” Recap: The dam breaks Nearly all plotlines move forward and we finally learn the pain Ted's concealing.
Reviews American Rust creaks under its own weight By: Tim Stevens Showtime's latest shot at prestige television has all the trappings, none of the energy.
Columns KinoKultur: Deep Rising and The Strangeness’ Tentacular Tales Though decades and budgets apart, Stephen Sommers and Melanie Anne Phillips' creature features dig into the unique terror of the tentacle.
Recap Ted Lasso “Headspace” Recap: Time for therapy The Ted Lasso Way runs into a brick wall this week.
Podcasts Joel P. West on balancing East and West for Shang-Chi The Short Term 12 and Just Mercy composer takes on his biggest challenge yet -- the expansive sound of the MCUi.
Reviews This overly familiar action revenge thriller is too little, too Kate By: Jon Negroni Mary Elizabeth Winstead works tirelessly to uplift Netflix's latest derivative shoot-em-up, to disappointing results.
Reviews What We Do in the Shadows is still killing it in season 3 By: Gena Radcliffe The undead roommates finally begin to learn how to live together as the FX sitcom continues its extraordinary run as the funniest show on TV
Reviews Amazon’s Cinderella is bippity-boppity-blah By: Lisa Laman The songs are bad and the social commentary is even worse in this new take on the classic fairy tale.
Reviews Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building layers freshness onto age-old comedy By: Michael Frank Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez start a true-crime podcast in a New York-set dramedy that offers plenty of charm with room to grow.
Fantasia 2021 Fantasia 2021: The subversive erotic shorts of Botanicum Eroticorum From the erotic to the absurd, Fantasia's adult short film showcase explores the form, function, and frottage of cinematic sex.