I’ve been a fan of Edgar Wright’s kinetic, music-driven approach to filmmaking since Shaun of the Dead, and over the past few years, Glen Powell has…
Browsing: brent hankins reviews
Over the past several years, Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone have forged the kind of creative partnership that recalls Scorsese and De Niro, or Kurosawa and…
I have an unhealthy affection for films where the primary action consists of great actors delivering great dialogue in various rooms. When done poorly, these can…
Disney’s decades-long struggle to transform Tron into a viable franchise has been, to put it mildly, a perplexing endeavor. The original 1982 film was considered groundbreaking…
I’ve long been a fan of Marc Maron’s WTF podcast. There’s something about the longform interview format that appeals to me: the opportunity to really dig…
I’ve enjoyed every Safdie Brothers film so far, and after they coaxed a truly stellar performance out of Adam Sandler for Uncut Gems — probably the…
I’ve been reading Stephen King books for most of my life, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned in all those years, it’s this: truly great…
Seven years after the Coen Brothers declared the end of their creative partnership, Ethan has carved out an intriguing niche for himself, crafting lesbian B-movie capers…
Okay, let’s get this out of the way right at the top: previous attempts to bring Marvel’s First Family to the big screen have ranged from…
James Gunn’s Superman arrives with the weight of legacy and expectation pressed upon its caped shoulders, and the unenviable task of trying to course correct and…
Walking into another Jurassic movie at this point feels a bit like wandering back onto Isla Nublar after the fences have failed: you have a pretty…
Ballerina marks the latest entry in the ever-expanding John Wick universe, and the first proper spinoff to step out from behind the shadow of the Baba…
The summer of 2021 unveiled something genuinely exciting in the horror landscape: Leigh Janiak’s Fear Street trilogy. Here was a cinematic endeavor that understood the assignment,…
Marvel’s latest entry, Thunderbolts*, arrives at a strange crossroads for the MCU. Once the most reliable engine in modern blockbuster filmmaking, the franchise has lost momentum…
Yadang: The Snitch opens with some pretty familiar crime thriller tropes: a drug bust gone sideways, a cop chasing ghosts, a fixer with too many phones…
Gareth Evans didn’t exactly set out to reinvent the wheel with Havoc, he just wants to see it catch fire and careen off a freeway overpass…
A tight, slightly ridiculous, occasionally stressful movie about a woman trying to survive the worst first date of her life, Drop — the latest from Happy…
Professional wrestling and Hollywood have always had a somewhat complicated relationship. The sport (or, if you prefer, “sports entertainment”) thrives on larger-than-life personalities and dramatic stakes…
With a history of collaboration spanning some three decades, Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke have long been a powerful pairing, and their partnership yields some of…
Premiering as part of the 75th Berlinale, Burhan Qurbani’s No Beast. So Fierce. is an audacious modern reworking of Richard III, transposing Shakespeare’s tragedy from 15th-century…
The image of the aging assassin has long been a fixture of action cinema, typically reserved for weary hitmen on one last job or reluctant mentors…
I’ve been a huge fan of Bong Joon-ho for years, and while the bulk of his filmography is remarkable, two films in particular stand out: Snowpiercer…
German director Tom Tykwer’s latest offering, The Light (or Das Licht), is the kind of movie that swings big but lands awkwardly, arriving with grand ambition…
With Captain America: Brave New World, Marvel Studios continues its long, winding effort to recalibrate the MCU. It’s a film that wants to stand on its…
In Train Dreams, director Clint Bentley delivers a striking adaptation of Denis Johnson’s novella, crafting a meditation on fate and grief, and how the passage of…
Writer-director James Sweeney’s Twinless begins with an off-screen car accident and an abrupt cut to a funeral — a tonal whiplash moment that immediately sets the…
Laura Casabé’s The Virgin of the Quarry Lake, premiering in the World Cinema Dramatic category at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, fuses gothic horror with the…
Sierra Falconer’s debut feature, Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake), unfolds like a series of postcards from a small-town summer: vivid, fleeting, and quietly profound.…
Leigh Whannell seemed like the perfect filmmaker to breathe new life into Universal’s Wolf Man. Not only was he the creative voice behind Saw and Insidious…
Grand Theft Hamlet sounds like the setup for a joke: a group of actors trying to perform Shakespeare’s Hamlet inside the chaotic, violence-filled world of Grand…
The Prosecutor finds martial arts legend Donnie Yen stepping into dual roles as both leading man and director, delivering a film that combines the intensity of…
Japan’s occupation of Korea during the early 20th century resulted in a bloody, decades-long struggle for independence, and Woo Min-ho’s visually stunning historical thriller Harbin seeks…
After three increasingly ambitious features that have established Robert Eggers as one of contemporary cinema’s most distinctive auteurs, the writer-director has finally sunk his teeth into…
The original Moana holds a very special place in my heart. It was the first movie I was invited to screen on the Disney studio lot…