illustrated

Many movies have savaged filmmaking from Billy Wilder’s SUNSET BLVD to Robert Altman’s THE PLAYER to Quentin Tarantino’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD. The new Spanish Argentine feature OFFICIAL [...]

There’s a lot of excess in ELVIS, director Baz Luhrmann’s new biopic about Elvis Presley. Gleaming cinematography that practically glows in the dark, simple exposition scenes cut like they’re [...]

In filmmaker Michael Glover Smith’s new family dramedy RELATIVE, everything is indeed relative. A college student’s casual indifference to his own graduation party, a Type A daughter’s concern [...]

Tony Soprano. Walter White. Don Draper. Dexter Morgan. Sheila Rubin? Indeed, it may be time to list Sheila, the lead character from Apple TV+’s dramedy PHYSICAL as one of television’s great [...]

Stephen Colbert suggests in the new HBO documentary GEORGE CARLIN’S AMERICAN DREAM that the legendary comedian was like the Beatles to his generation of comics. Colbert is right as not only was [...]

A beleaguered mind can drive any soul to the brink, especially one plagued by a distressing cocktail of anguish, guilt, and depression. In the case of young wife Harper (Jessie Buckley), [...]

The topic of suicide is a hard sell for any film, but while the new release ALL MY PUNY SORROWS is ostensibly about such an unsavory subject, what’s really being examined in the drama is the [...]

It’s rare when a film settles into a single setting, focusing on the characters within it, and eschews the razzle-dazzle of special effects or a self-conscious camera. One can count such movies [...]

In the decades of Batman lore, the Caped Crusader has often been described as “half ninja, half Sherlock Holmes.” Outside of the animated series from the early 90s and its cartoon off-shoots, [...]

Movie musicals can make us believe that our forefathers harmonized (1776), New York street gangs Arabesqued through the city (WEST SIDE STORY), and giant plants boogied to Motown (LITTLE SHOP OF [...]