7 Best Releases Studio A24 on Fubotv

If there’s anything Ari Aster wants you to understand after watching his newest film, it’s that he’s funny. With just three feature films under his belt, Beau Is Afraid marks both a massive departure from his previous films and a solidifying of his style. It’s a movie about terror, without a ton of interest in being terrifying. More specifically, it’s a movie about the absurdity of fear and the ridiculousness of human nature. And yeah, it’s definitely about moms, too. Continue Reading →

Ambulance Michael Bay, whose 1990s actioners are—for good and ill—iconic parts of the decade’s cinema, and whose 2000s and 2010s work is reliably fascinating (from the terrific Pain & Gain to the baleful Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen) delivers a bombastic chase movie that doubles as a damn good character study. Loving but criminal brothers (Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) take an ambulance hostage to escape a heist gone sideways. Along for the ride are a masterful EMT (Eiza González) resigned to personal apathy, and a critically injured cop (Jackson White). Amidst the carefully shaped chaos of burnt rubber and bullets, Bay makes space for Gyllenhaal (frenzied and in denial about how badly everything’s gone) Abdul-Mateen II (trying to keep cool even as that becomes impossible) and González (who must break out of her self-built walls if she is to survive) to bounce off each other in a pile of compelling ways. [JH] Continue Reading →

It's safe to say that no one necessarily asked for a sequel to Ti West's X, especially six mere months after its release. Not because it was bad, mind you; it was actually quite good, a nifty throwback to Texas Chainsaw Massacre with a hefty soupcon of Debbie Does Dallas tossed in the mix. But its tale of a ragtag amateur-porn crew besieged by a murderous old country crone envious of their youthful beauty and raging libidos hardly cried out for a followup. Yet here we are with Pearl, a prequel that dabbles in decidedly different genre homages but might just be the superior slasher of the two. Continue Reading →

As the discourse rages over how tame the mainstream movie scene can be—with its sexless heroes and bloodless violence—it can be tempting to elevate any film that hearkens back to "the good old days" of sex and slashers just for the sake of its own supposed transgressiveness. But luckily, Ti West's X largely earns that title, a playful and idiosyncratic ode to both ends of the '70s sleaze cinema spectrum (hardcore porn and Wes Craven-esque slashers) alike. Not only that, it's blissfully literate towards its influences, with a nod to larger points about the aesthetics and politics of desire, the fetishization of youth, and so much more. Continue Reading →

Stories revolving around single men suddenly thrust into the father’s role (even if only temporarily) obsess about men’s ineptitude. Whether they think their failure to take naturally to childcare is biological or sociological or better played as comedy or tragedy doesn’t really matter. For whatever reason, the takeaway is still men aren’t cut out for fatherhood of any kind on their own. In a shocking breath of fresh air, C’mon C’mon says, to put it bluntly, fuck that.  Continue Reading →

It’s no more than a few minutes into its 132-minute runtime that The Green Knight lays its cards on the table. It doesn’t really subvert expectations here; it’s not like it immediately carves out its identity. Rather, it makes itself clear in the most literal of ways, although in one that doesn’t register as such immediately. After an opening in which Sir Gawain (Dev Patel) wakes up hungover and half-naked, the camera tracks him from behind through sweaty medieval corridors and out into the cloud-covered morning. As he walks through the village, text flashes across the screen declaring itself “a filmed adaptation.” Continue Reading →