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Cold War

“Watching this is like reading a Junichiro Tanizaki short story: you’re enthralled by all the ways that love can blossom into something toxic and obsessive. After all, we are witnessing a couple break up then crash back into each other’s lives repeatedly over a fifteen year span. It’s a slim na” read more

At Eternity’s Gate

“God, Willem Dafoe really is one of our most undervalued actors. Ignore for a second that he’s about twenty-five years older than Vincent van Gogh when he died and look at his performance here. He’s been this good for so long that it’s easy to forget just how captivating he is in close-up, how ” read more

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

“I was texting back and forth with a good friend about the film’s I had yet to watch in order to complete my yearly Oscar challenge. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs was one of them. Not for any deep reason beyond it was on Netflix so what was the rush, really? I think he succinctly put it best in that” read more

Fire Song

“Does it mildly pain me to take a few knocks against Fire Song? Yes, it does. I mean, how often are you greeted with a film about queer native characters? I’m sure there’s more out there, but they don’t exactly leap out of the film festival circuit limbo into the wider world very often, now do ” read more

Mirai

“I love this movie for its premise but cannot wrap my brain around its execution. Ostensibly a family-themed animated film, I can’t picture this resonating with a child audience or keeping the adults enthralled. It exists in the no man’s land between these twin points.   Granted, the fantasy ” read more

Isle of Dogs

“The artisanal process of stop-motion feels like a natural medium for a director as fussily detailed and idiosyncratic as Wes Anderson. His handcrafted forays into the medium have produced two distinct films that both provide a melancholic, winsome experience. He manages to, as Chuck Jones once descr” read more

American Life

“The twenty years between her scrappy, minimalist disco self-titled debut and this release, her ninth studio album, is an eternity as far as pop singers go. You didn’t exactly see Paula Abdul, Cyndi Lauper, or Taylor Dayne maintaining the same amount of chart presence, if not outright dominance. Ma” read more

Design of a Decade: 1986 – 1996

“She was nineteen when she released Control in 1986, a declarative statement of purpose and proclamation that her brothers weren’t the only pop geniuses in the family. Janet Jackson’s “I’m a grown woman” mission statement seemed a little odd coming from someone that young, but her resolve a” read more

First Reformed

“Paul Schrader’s work is obsessed with men in perpetual crisis, frequently punctuated by acts of great violence. Rarely is the aura of his work so muted as it is in First Reformed, a late-career masterpiece from the purveyor of toxic masculinity in self-destruct mode. Think of the explosions of vio” read more

Damita Jo

“For allegedly being an expose on yet another side and persona within Janet Jackson that we haven't met yet, Damita Jo is pretty par for the course with all of Janet's recent output. It shares the wild inconsistency of All For You, the hyper-sexual murmuring of janet., and the autobiographical be” read more

All for You

“After a string of four genre-defining and defying masterpieces, it seems inevitable that Janet Jackson would stumble. No one releases perfect albums every time, but the drop between The Velvet Rope and All for You is prominent. The Velvet Rope was the sound of an icon seeking personal and sexual sel” read more