A chilling historical drama rendered with impeccable sleight of hand, Rithy Panh’s “Rendez-vous avec Pol Pot” (“Meeting With Pol Pot”) reveals its political dimensions through layers of obfuscation. While based partially on real events (and on the writings of American war journalist Elizabeth Becker), it crafts a fictitious tale of three French journalists attempting to […]

In the long-gestating, career-encompassing allegory that is “Megalopolis,” director Francis Ford Coppola puts his name above the title and, in the film’s lone act of modesty, the words “A Fable” beneath it. To call this garish, idea-bloated monstrosity a mere “fable” is to grossly undersell the project’s expansive insights into art, life and legacy. Here, […]

If a young woman ever knocks on your door late at night and asks “Is Tamara home?”, then consider moving. All three home invasions in the world of “The Strangers” have begun this way, and none have ended well for whoever answered. It took a decade for the door to first knock again in the […]

Maybe it was the chilly temperatures, steady breeze and light spatterings of rain, which take a toll when a person is standing outdoors on an elevated platform — like the stage of a concert venue — for two hours. Or maybe it was just an off night. But the feverishly passionate reviews for the first dates […]

It is polite, we are told, not to speak ill of the dead, though it’s just as often prudent not to speak ill of the living. For victims with grievances against those older and more powerful than them, it’s hard to know when to speak up at all. But a quivering collective fury scalds through […]

Set during the Civil War, a long way from the front lines, Roberto Minervini’s “The Damned” continues the Italian helmer’s career-long examination of the rifts and affinities between overlooked segments of American society. Apart from one long, destabilizing battle with an unseen adversary, the portrayal is a relatively peaceful one, following a group of Union […]

What is poignant about “This Life of Mine” — the final film by French writer-director Sophie Fillières — is all but impossible to extract from the beleaguered circumstances of its creation. Aged just 58, Fillières died last summer, shortly after completing the shoot of this wistful, somewhat autofictional study of midlife feminine crisis. Postproduction was […]

Netflix’s acclaimed 19th century-set “Bridgerton” has returned for the first half of its third season, and it’s more lush and enticing than audiences might remember. Season 3 opens as a new crop of debutantes enter the marriage market. As the young ladies prepare to dazzle Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel), the latest Lady Whistledown (voiced by […]

Religion, Karl Marx said, is the opiate of the masses. Today, he would likely say that the opiate of the masses is fame — the desire for it, the things you have to do to get it, the fragmentary nature of it (the old “15 minutes” is now, in many cases, more like 15 seconds), […]

In a pre-feminist age, Karoline is what entirely too many people would call a “fallen woman.” Alone, unemployed and pregnant by a man not her husband, she is acknowledged only to be punished, and invisible for all remaining purposes. Women like Karoline don’t fall of their own accord. They’re dropped, often from a great height, […]

The longest days in your life are those where a loved one dies. Exhausting waves of feeling lap each other over the hours, stretching and blurring them as disbelief gives way to panic, to fatigue, to deep and paralyzing sadness, all while practical tasks mount and accelerate. As you struggle through forms, travel plans and […]

John Krasinski proudly makes movies for and about the whole family. Maybe his vastly successful “A Quiet Place” franchise, with all its screechy monsters, is too much for youngsters to handle. But there’s still an undeniable, innocent loveliness to those movies, with warm moments that lean closely into the bonds of an adoring family that […]

It’s hard to think of an album with a more confusing backstory than Childish Gambino-aka-Donald Glover’s “Atavista,” which was first released stealthily — with little notice, promotion, cover artwork or even song titles — into a dark world four years ago, in the early days of the pandemic, and originally named after its grim release […]

The premise of the drag makeover show “We’re Here” is that queer liberation hasn’t extended as far as it could. For three seasons, a group of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” alumni have traveled to small towns throughout the country, helping members of the local LGBTQ community assert their identity and visibility through gender-bending performances. But even […]

Mary J. Blige has been a superstar for more than 30 years not just because of her unforgettable voice, hit records and Oscar-nominated acting — it’s also because of the deep bond she’s built with her fans. “The Queen of Hip-Hop Soul,” is not only one of the most successful artists of her generation, but […]

In a sea of rote, listless IP, the first season of AMC’s “Interview With the Vampire” felt like manna from heaven — or blood to a thirsty nightwalker. Yes, the show was part of a reverse-engineered attempt at an Anne Rice cinematic universe. But in the hands of showrunner Rolin Jones, “Interview With the Vampire” […]

The world of Pierre Creton’s “A Prince” is lush and verdant. His protagonist is a gardener’s apprentice whose penchant for taming and nurturing the wilderness around him is only matched by the latent eroticism he finds in various older men he comes to be involved with. Mostly driven by voiceover narration meant to ground and […]

"The Last Stop in Yuma County," a real-time, single-location crime thriller set at a gas-food-lodging stop in sunbaked Arizona, is what you might call an exercise in Tarantino knockoff nostalgia.

Black Twitter was something you were either aware of, or you weren’t. However, the influence of Black culture on the social media platform can’t be understated. Hulu’s “Black Twitter: A People’s History,” based on Jason Parham’s 2021 Wired cover story and directed by Prentice Penny, is a three-part docuseries revolving around the voices, movements, GIFs and […]