Movies

Passion at the heart of 'Killers of the Flower Moon'

When actor Ethan Hawke lived briefly in Atlanta as a child in the late 1970s, he recalled his mother embracing the Georgia gothic author Flannery O’Connor, who died of lupus in 1965 at age 39.

There’s a double-layered sense of self-reflective nostalgia baked into Alexander Payne’s misfit holiday movie “The Holdovers.” Set in 1970, there’s nostalgia for the time period, which is textured and rendered with care and conviction on-screen. But the film itself, a warm, spicy brew of humor, poignancy and irascible charm, also inspires the odd desire to be rewatching it while you’re watching it, a kind of nostalgia for the present moment. That funny feeling is reflected in the plot too, in which a trio of near strangers form an unlikely but indelible bond over Christmas break at a Massachusetts boarding school.

At the age of 80, with five decades of a sprawling filmography under his belt, American master filmmaker Martin Scorsese has made his first Western. “Killers of the Flower Moon,” is a staggering work, a massive, massively important film from the auteur, in which he uses the tropes and iconography of the Western — a genre that trafficked heavily in harmful Native American stereotypes — to tell ...

In the cheeky voice-over narration provided by the protagonist of the semi-autobiographical "The Persian Version," Maryam Keshavarz's at times blithe and at times blue dramedy about the clash and connection between Leila (Layla Mohammadi), a bisexual Iranian American aspiring filmmaker, and her more conservative mother Shireen (Niousha Noor), Leila tells us that she dreams of becoming the "Iranian American Martin Scorsese."

'Fair Play': a movie with no one to root for

Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling are trading in their flashy "Barbie" fits for something sleeker as both will reportedly share the big screen once again in a prequel of the beloved heist film "Ocean's 11."

The title of the film “Foe,” a cerebral-to-the-point-of-bloodless marital drama set in a dystopian future, is apt in more ways than one. The most obvious meaning could refer to one or both of its central characters: Saoirse Ronan’s Henrietta, or Hen, a waitress at a rural diner, and her husband, Junior (Paul Mescal), a worker in a giant chicken-processing plant.

A movie opens Friday about a groundbreaking singer-songwriter who’s become a legend as the voice of her times, who has captivated audiences with the honesty of her voice and mesmerizing stage presence.

Last month, Makenzie Rau-Lehmann called her local movie theater in Duluth, Minn., with an unusual but important question: Did it have any restrictions on singing and dancing?

It’s not just books that can be adapted into films these days — the biggest movie of the year is based on a toy. Even Twitter (or now, X) threads have been optioned into screenplays, such as the rollicking 2021 film “Zola,” a wild ride directed by Janicza Bravo depicting the events recounted in a Twitter thread written by Aziah “Zola” King. And this spooky season comes another Twitter-thread ...

Del Toro's presence lifts Netflix film 'Reptile'

Two of the most talked about and most anticipated movies of the fall are concert films from Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. That's a good thing for both of the pop musicians' camps, and a weird thing for the movie industry and, you know, actual movie stars. Well it's a good thing in that the two movies will bring people to theaters. That's something that's desperately needed right now, as the box ...

"She Came to Me" exists in between things: airy romance and psychological depth; operatic fantasy and gritty reality; farce and fatalism. Writer-director Rebecca Miller executes that balancing act with lighthearted audacity in a film that aspires, with fitful success, to resurrect the lost art of screwball comedy - with some literal opera thrown in for musical measure.

Australian filmmaker Kitty Green has made a name for herself teasing out the complex relationship of gender, labor and industry. She started in documentary filmmaking with “Ukraine Is Not a Brothel,” and “Casting JonBenet,” but her narrative debut “The Assistant,” starring Julia Garner, made a splash in a post-Harvey Weinstein film landscape. Following a young female assistant working for an unseen movie mogul, Green methodically unpacks the intricacies of this toxic, sexist workplace, and the ways in which this young woman attempts to navigate and justify her presence in this world.

As "The Exorcist: Believer" builds toward its expected climax, a showdown between two possessed teenage girls and a tag team of amateur and self-anointed demon specialists comes to a boil.

'No One Will Save You' from a bad plotline