When remembering “Practical Magic,” Griffin Dunne’s 1998 silly-spooky witchy sister movie, the image immediately conjured has to be “midnight margaritas.” The scene of Ni...
“The Uprising” starts as a true story of medieval England in the grip of economic revolution. That's good stuff. Then it gets inexplicably hijacked by an origin story...
Somewhere along the way, Sir Kenneth Branagh developed a knack for playing Russians. He was the vindictive oligarch in “Tenet” and a villainous industrialist in “Jack Rya...
Masked soldiers deployed on domestic soil and an air of conspiratorial paranoia give Adam Wingard’s not-quite-grindhouse siege film “Onslaught” a contemporary pulse, even...
There’s a poignant poetry in the Sisyphean quest of Looney Tunes character Wile E. Coyote. This born yearner roams the desert, trying to catch and eat the Road Runner, hi...
It says something about us that dogs are critical when it comes to postapocalyptic movies. Tom Hanks had an adorable terrier in “Finch” and Will Smith had a heroic German...
The latest Jason Statham joint, “Mutiny,” isn’t playing coy with its references. The film, directed by Jean-François Richet, written by Lindsay Michel and J.P. Davis, is ...
It turns out that the honey business isn't as sweet as it sounds: In the new movie “The Rivals of Amziah King,” beekeepers steal from each other, poison rivals' insects a...
“She is gone, but she used to be mine,” go the words of Sara Bareilles’ poignant and powerful anthem from “Waitress,” the quintessential Broadway 11 o’clock number. For m...
At the end of the block in David Robert Mitchell’s “The End of Oak Street” is a cul-de-sac with a telephone pole in the middle and wires radiating out like the cables of ...
“The Purge” for sex is the best way to describe the premise of “One Night Only” unless you prefer Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” for one-night stands.
As the movie anno...
“Tony,” the Anthony Bourdain biopic, is a coming-of-age tale for a modern culinary giant. Set over just a summer, it's also clearly an appetizer. And like all first cours...
Are the ears playing tricks on us? Or does Tom Holland’s Peter Parker sound, at the beginning of “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” like more of a native New Yorker than before...
As a movie about getting older and still having to cater to younger demographics, the Kevin Hart comedy “72 Hours” has a meta synergy to it.
Hart plays a successful New ...
It’s right there in the trailer for “Motor City”: “revenge is louder than words,” splashed over a montage of fists clobbering, cars crashing, and disco dancing. The tagli...
It’s the tennis establishment versus pickleball enthusiasts at an uptight club in “The Dink,” a kind of spiritual descendant of “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.” The st...
Getting home, and turning back the clock, has long been at the root of Christopher Nolan’s films. The astronauts of “Interstellar” painstakingly lose 23 years in space tr...
Say what you will about them, but the Disney live-action remakes have at least given us a choice. Which would you rather see? A spirited, soaring, animated “Moana,” or a ...
French filmmaker Sébastien Vaniček vowed when he took charge of the sixth installment in the “Evil Dead” film series that it would be the most brutal. Mission accomplishe...
Every once in a while, Hollywood gets high on its own supply and makes a love letter to moviemaking. It happened recently with Steven Spielberg's “The Fabelmans” and Geor...
The “Enola Holmes” movies have done nothing so much as chart Millie Bobby Brown’s evolution from child actor to movie star. She was 16 when the first “Enola Holmes” debut...
Soufflé is for dinner, but much more is on the table in Olivia Wilde’s deliciously entertaining chamber comedy, “The Invite,” about a couple whose marriage is on the rock...
The “Toy Story” movies, like “Star Wars” and those games Michael Jordan played with the Washington Wizards, pose a problem of canon.
The first three movies are a near-per...
In the opening moments of Michael Sarnoski’s “The Death of Robin Hood,” Hugh Jackman’s Robin shelters on a cold and desolate peatland. A young attacker (Jade Croot) emerg...
“Disclosure Day” invites you into its world with a kick to the face. Or maybe it’s a stomp. Whatever it is, this opening sequence, in a garish professional wrestling ...
The knife-wielding serial killer known as Ghostface unwisely tries to stab Teyana Taylor in the opening scene of “Scary Movie” and it goes rather poorly. The dagger the p...
“Masters of the Universe” might not know who its audience is. Sure, yes, perhaps “everyone” is the goal. Modern blockbusters are usually aiming for those golden four ...
Let’s just say that the wedding band has never occupied the most exalted rung of the ladder in music.
Playing “September” and “Celebration” is often what’s most required....
Sure, folks discuss the weather a lot, especially in Britain.
Still, it’s hard to imagine that a quiet chat about the weather — and why it isn’t boring — could be an emo...
What evil lurks in the drabbest of interiors?
The meme-rooted “Backrooms” is the latest movie to pull its mounting horrors out of liminal spaces. “Exit 8,” released earli...
