The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

Depending on your taste, the idea of Nicolas Cage playing himself either sounds like a self-indulgent disaster or the most fun you’ve had at a movie in years. Fortunately, even the most Cage-ambivalent will have to admit “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” is solidly the latter. It’s 2004. I’m nine years old and entering…

The Lost City

You know studio movies are in a rut when, amid endless Spider-Bat sequels, you find yourself longing for the likes of such escapist 1980s offerings as “Romancing the Stone” and “King Solomon’s Mines.” I can’t be the only one who’s been craving a good old-fashioned treasure hunt, where the leads throw sparks and the ladies’…

Fresh – The Horror of Modern Dating

In debuting director Mimi Cave’s entertaining and bonkers satirical horror “Fresh,” Noa knows all about the losers on the bland menu of her endless app scrolls—it’s understandable that she has lost her taste for kissing the frogs. Still, our modern West Coaster refuses to give up optimism and puts herself out there courageously, scarf-wearing douche-y dudes…

The Batman

“The Batman” isn’t a superhero movie. Not really. All the trappings are there: the Batmobile, the rugged suit, the gadgets courtesy of trusty butler Alfred. And of course, at the centre, is the Caped Crusader himself: brooding, tormented, seeking his own brand of nighttime justice in a Gotham City that’s spiralling into squalor and decay.…

How Sex & the City Shaped Female Relationships?

When it first aired on HBO back in 1998, “Sex and the City” was a revolutionary show given its content (a whole lot of sex), the way said content was explored (openly, without the use of any beeping) and whom it was explored by (four thirty-something, mostly single women). Like all things revolutionary, it contended with a…

Belfast

Kenneth Branagh has made a masterpiece. It’s a movie of formal beauty, precise performances, complex and textured writing and enough comic one-liners and classic Van Morrison tracks to make you forget that you’re watching a drama about seething sectarian hatreds. “Belfast” is unquestionably Kenneth Branagh’s most personal film to date, but it’s also sure to have universal…

Best Movies of 2021

2021 is over and if it taught us something, it’s that time flies even if we’re not having fun at all. Last year, I felt irrelevant because I didn't watch enough movies to gather my favourite films in a Top 10 list. This year, again, I feel like I watched just as many films as…

The Matrix Resurrections

After all this time, what does the blockbuster have left to offer? At its platonic ideal, a big-budget, mass-marketed movie induces pleasure. With swift and bright characterization, it allows actors to operate in a grander register, aching to fill the space of dizzying visual landscapes around them. Bombast and awe on all fronts. Maybe it’s…

Next Door

There’s a persistent note of inconsequential silliness to this film, set mostly in a scuzzy bar. It is written for the screen by the German novelist and dramatist Daniel Kehlmann and directed by its lead actor, Daniel Brühl, who features as an ironised version of himself, a self-involved movie star who is living the dream in…

Spider-Man: No Way Home

There’s a curse of sorts that’s become attached to “the third Spider-Man movie”, one that’s brought us something very bad, something very cancelled and now something very delayed. After a Covid-afflicted shoot and the postponed release that comes with that, we have “Spider-Man: No Way Home”, a big-budget tentpole tasked with not only proving that a Spidey…