“When do you become an adult?” asks the 13-year-old John (Charlie Shotwell) of his mother. Her response, apparently, doesn’t satisfy him. So John intends to find out for himself. He drugs his yuppie p...

In his essays about aesthetic theory, Leo Tolstoy talks about art arising from “the artist’s soul, which, when expressed, lights up the path along which humanity progresses.” Adapting Tolstoy’s ...

Some movie theater experiences you never forget. It was the summer of 1999, and I had just received my driver’s license and started to explore my newfound freedom on the road. Soon I would get my firs...

Damsel, written and directed by the Zellner brothers, might answer the question of why no one smiles in Wild West photos. Experts argue that early cameras required longer exposure times, so photograph...

The Tomorrow War plays like the filmmakers started by asking everyone involved to make a list of their favorite science-fiction movies, and then Frankensteined elements from those lists into a vaguely...

The repetitious title says it all, twice. Translated, Halloween H20: 20 Years Later means “Halloween Halloween 20: 20 Years Later.” That sort of stuttering uncertainty about itself carries through the...

For most of its runtime, Frailty contains a tenuousness worthy of its title. The film is about a single father who believes he was enlisted by an angel to destroy demons hiding among us. He tells his ...

“When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.” – Jean Jacques Rousseau In the opening shots of George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead, we see three former members of a brass ba...

George A. Romero’s Day of the Dead is about breakdowns in civility—the manners, relationships, and logic that buttress our culture. Many of the film’s characters return to regressed versions of themse...