Watching The World’s End today, separated from my first viewing by six years that feel more like a lifetime, I don’t see a thrilling and heart-wrenching story. Instead, I see one that’s profoundly sad. Read More
The Warriors is about living with—through, during—the night, a lesson we all learn as kids, and carry with us as we sleep. It’s not so much about the fear of what’s behind, but about running as fast as possible toward what’s on the other side. Read More
Nothing is ever quite settled in Martin Scorsese's After Hours, it's a cinematic maze that frequently dips its toes into the absurd and macabre. Read More
On the journey to hell and back in The Crow. Read More
"You know how, in therapy, you realize something was the cause of something else? This film was like natural therapy for me. I started thinking, 'What else do I remember about the one-child policy, and how did it affect me?'" Read More
In many ways, Russian Doll feels like an extended exercise in cognitive therapy. Read More
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood, a melancholy elegy with a fairy tale at its core, is a work of surprises, from an unconventional structure to stylistic flourishes to a cartoonishly outrageous denouement. Read More
Only Lovers Left Alive is about marriage, and about weathering long dark nights of the soul just long enough to see the light again, taking each wave as it comes and then bracing for the next one. Read More
The Sisters Brothers lives in a conflict born of constantly dueling notions: civilization’s failed attempt to tame the wild, the animal impulse’s struggle against the rational impulse, the impossibility of the dream when faced with reality. Read More
What if, Clue seems to ask, futility isn’t an Achilles’ heel—what if it’s the point? Read More
In John Carpenter's three primary Los Angeles films—Assault on Precinct 13, They Live, and Escape from L.A.—he explores the degree to which paranoia is essential to the American way of life. Read More
The exclusivity of that Los Angeles phenomenon—and the loneliness inherent within it—is the focus of writer-director Sofia Coppola’s only male-centered film, Somewhere. Read More