[ The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] Edward Dmytryk’s The Sniper  caught me unawares—like a bullet...

Paul Schrader plays an aging alcoholic slowly drinking himself to death as penance for his former racism, so feeble that he can barely...

[ The following essay contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] The Exorcist III  is, first and foremost, about faith . I don’t...

[ The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] In many ways, River  is less artistically ambitious than Beyond...

[ The following review contains SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] There’s a recurring image in Juror #2  that is as impactful as it is...

[ The following review contains SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] Hundreds of Beavers  isn’t just the best comedy released to the general...

[ The following essay contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] At first glance, the premise of Junji Ito’s “Smashed” is almost...

Creature from the Black Lagoon  belongs to the horror genre; that much is obvious. Not from the perspective of the human “protagonists,”...

[ The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] With the possible exception of The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then...

[ The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] Michael Powell's Peeping Tom opens with an extreme closeup of an...

While Alice, Sweet Alice  (alternatively titled Communion and Holy Terror ) ostensibly takes place in the early 1960s, its themes are...

[ The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] For approximately ninety percent of its ( extremely brief)...

I’ll say this for Torso : it wastes little time; within the first ten seconds  of the opening credits, a woman has already removed her...

Like many a follow-up to a bona fide cult classic, Tokyo: The Last War  (sequel to Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis ) is widely considered to...

Hit Man  features a multitude of compelling themes, meditating on the conflict between public and private personae, the subjective nature...

Master Gardner  opens with the quintessential Paul Schrader image: a character in an otherwise empty room hunched over a writing desk,...

[ The following review contains SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] I’m trying to remove the term “body horror” from my film criticism...

How to describe She Is Conann ? The film resists literalist readings, eschewing traditional narrative in favor of concocting a...

[ The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! ] Near the conclusion of Isabel Sandoval’s quietly beautiful Lingua...

Prior to seeing DAN DA DAN: First Encounter —a special theatrical premiere event for Science SARU’s latest anime series, presented by...