There is a peculiar irony in the notion that one of the most influential instruments of human connection emerged from a world of resentment, insecurity, and fractured friendships, although David Fincher's THE SOCIAL NETWORK is far too intelligent to reduce its subject to such a convenient contradiction. What
The history of technological progress is littered with extraordinary achievements whose consequences have proven considerably more complicated than the intentions of their creators, although few innovations have transformed contemporary society quite as profoundly as social media. What began as an ambitious experiment in digital connectivity gradually evolved into an immensely
Historical dramas about Sengoku Japan tend to gravitate toward the inevitable giants — Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, Ieyasu — men whose reputations have become so enormous that everyone around them risks becoming scenery. THE SAMURAI AND THE PRISONER takes a more interesting route, narrowing its attention to Kuroda Kanbei and Araki Murashige while allowing
There is a characteristic cadence to an Aaron Sorkin script—a rapid-fire, metronomic ping-pong of intellect and ideology where everyone in the room is the smartest person in the room, or at least capable of landing a devastating witty retort on two seconds' notice. In THE TRIAL
Some films earn five stars through precision, others through ambition, and a rare few simply make resistance feel pointless, which is exactly where TONY finds itself: funny, warm, unruly, emotionally intelligent, and so completely comfortable inside its own personality that trying to pick apart its pleasures almost feels counterproductive. At
I may be Canadian, but I have long been an absolute sucker for Australian film and television, from Indigenous storytelling and historical dramas to comedies and smaller character pieces. Something about the combination of dry humour, cultural specificity, eccentric personalities and landscapes stretching forever consistently works on me, which meant
Some historical epics overwhelm with scale. Others overwhelm with violence. MONGOL does something more interesting than either. It strips one of history's most mythologized conquerors back to the years before the legend, before the empire, before the world knew the name Genghis Khan. Rather than asking how he
George Clooney’s THE IDES OF MARCH begins with a microphone check, an empty auditorium and Ryan Gosling standing behind a podium that does not belong to him, which is an appropriately understated introduction for a film fascinated by the people who manufacture political power while somebody else stands beneath
There is a temptation to describe TÁR as a film about power, and an equally strong temptation to reduce it to the cultural debates that surrounded its release, but Todd Field has made something considerably more elusive than either of those readings suggests. This is not a film about a
There is a temptation to describe ROMA as a film about memory, and while that is true, it is also incomplete. Alfonso Cuarón is not simply reconstructing the Mexico City of his childhood with astonishing fidelity; he is interrogating the fragile architecture that memory builds around itself. This is not
There is a reason THE ODYSSEY has endured for nearly three millennia. It is not simply because of Cyclopes, sirens, sea monsters, or the intervention of gods. Those elements have always been the epic's most visible features, but never its most important ones. At its heart, the story
History is often remembered through the stories that are told the loudest. For generations, the experiences of Indigenous peoples during the westward expansion of the United States were too often pushed aside or filtered through someone else's perspective. BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE chooses a different path.