As its protagonist, the ex-con Cristiano (Aristides de Sousa), roves from job to job in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, João Dumans and Affonso Uchoa’s Araby lingers at the threshold of one story after another. The point (both social and existential) is that the thresholds remain uncrossed, and that his life is…
It’s mid-June, which means Pixar is racing another shiny all-ages blockbuster into theaters: Incredibles 2, Brad Bird’s belated return to animation and to his first family of incognito superheroes, scrambling through another retro-futuristic adventure and some of the best action scenes in superhero-cinema history. On…
Does Hereditary live up to the hype? Or is its scariness a matter of personal taste? On this edition of Film Club, A.V. Club film editor A.A. Dowd (who has been raving about the movie since the beginning of the year) and staff critic Ignatiy Vishnevetsky sit down to discuss the Sundance horror sensation, which gives…
A.V. Club film editor A.A. Dowd and staff critic Ignatiy Vishnevetsky are back with another edition of Film Club, this time discussing Ocean’s 8, the female-fronted soft-sequel to Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s trilogy. Directed by The Hunger Games’ Gary Ross, Ocean’s 8 unfortunately lacks the polish, charm, and wit of…
On a typical Wednesday night in the satirical techno-future of 2028, while the rest of Los Angeles riots over the price of water, business continues as usual at the Hotel Artemis, a members-only underground hospital (or “darkroom,” in the movie’s cyberpunk parlance) with grungy, century-old art deco décor. The…
A belated spin-off of Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s caper comedies (minus the earlier films’ wit, chemistry, and style), Ocean’s 8 could learn a thing or two about brevity and craft: It belabors the basic plot points Ocean’s 11 dispatched with a single cut or smirk, the result a hacky imitation of the series’ glitzy…
Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases or premieres, or occasionally our own inscrutable whims. With the Sundance sensation Hereditary opening in theaters this week, we’re taking a look at other movies that make our skin crawl.
So many movies, so little time. Every week brings a new crop of them, opening in multiplexes and arthouse theaters across the nation, and arriving in increasingly high volumes on streaming platforms like Netflix. How’s a voracious moviegoer to keep up? That’s where The A.V. Club comes in. The first week of every…
As a close look at liberal and upper-middle-class mores, Silas Howard’s Brooklyn-set indie drama A Kid Like Jake seethes with potential. Alex (Claire Danes) and Greg Wheeler (Jim Parsons) are, on the surface, a happily married couple. He is a therapist with a small practice (we only ever see one client in his office);…
Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases or premieres, or occasionally our own inscrutable whims. This week, as the galaxy’s most popular smuggler returns to the big screen in Solo: A Star Wars Story, we’re taking a look at some of our favorite movies about charismatic crooks and cons.
After a brief hiatus, A.V. Club film editor A.A. Dowd and staff critic Ignatiy Vishnevetsky are back with a new edition of Film Club, discussing Disney’s latest trip to the galaxy far, far away, Solo: A Star Wars Story. Wherein the last entry in the Star Wars saga broke from convention (to the chagrin of some die-hard…
James Franco, whose résumé as a director is as extensive as it is undistinguished, leaves behind the misbegotten literary adaptations that have been the bedrock of his filmography to try his hand at a sci-fi B-movie in Future World, co-directed with repeat collaborator Bruce Thierry Cheung. In a post-apocalyptic…
Frankenstein, Or The Modern Prometheus, an exceptional piece of moody teenage fiction that the young Mary Shelley (née Godwin) first published anonymously in 1818, gave the world a new myth of creation gone wrong: the story of Victor Frankenstein, a scientist consumed by obsessions, and the nameless monster he brings…
Spoiler Space offers thoughts on, and a place to discuss, the plot points we can’t reveal in our official reviews. Fair warning: Major plot points for Deadpool 2 are revealed below.
What Are You Watching? is a weekly space for The A.V Club’s staff and readers to share their thoughts, observations, and opinions on film and TV.
Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases or premieres, or occasionally our own inscrutable whims. The summer movie season is upon us, which means it’s time for a semi-annual tradition: singing the praises of the most unloved, underperforming, or simply forgotten summer blockbusters.
The live-action talking-pet comedy, which is approximately as old as the sound film, teaches us that there are some cases where you really can’t teach an old dog new tricks. There seem to be hundreds of these things, mostly featuring canines (because they’re relatable and easy to train), yet none of them come within…
In his 2008 article “True Crime: A Postmodern Murder Mystery,” The New Yorker’s resident chronicler of deadly obsessions, David Grann, recounted the strange case of a Polish writer who became the prime suspect in an unsolved murder after a detective recognized details of the crime in his debut novel. The story was…
The title of First Reformed, Paul Schrader’s best film in a very long time, refers to an old abolitionist church in upstate New York, a metaphor for Christianity’s neglected values. The First Reformed has no congregation to speak of, only visitors and tourists, and its care has fallen into the hands of a lost soul,…
