Sasha, a singer at a musical theatre, persuades his friend Kulik to take him to a remote sacred place for fishing. Soon they find out that wood spirits live here. Kulik warns Sasha to ask them of nothing and not to fool the evil spirit, but he breaks the taboo — and now the spirits demand blood payment. Kulik faces a difficult choice: to leave Sasha in the forest and escape, or pull him out and pay with his life.
We, the Jane Austen aficionados, are suckers for everything and anything under the sun that’s remotely related to her and her world. That’s because we are so drawn to her unique style of fiction, romance, and social commentary, we take any allusion to her influence as a hint to what to expect when we start watching a movie or reading a book.
Him is visually stunning—all concrete cathedrals and bone-rattling impact shots that look like a nightmare highlight reel. Marlon Wayans is magnetic as this legendary quarterback who's basically selling salvation with a smile that never quite reaches his eyes. But the story keeps running in circles: more tests, more cryptic pep talks, more ritualistic drills. The sports-as-religion metaphor beats you over the head when subtlety would've been more effective. The middle drags, and that finale chooses spectacle over substance. It's undeniably stylish, but left me cold. Also worth noting: despite the Monkeypaw connection, this isn't actually a Jordan Peele film—he didn't write or direct.
The horror franchise that had moviegoers watching behind their fingers but on the edge of their seats. The Conjuring quartet released its final installment this year, and it did not disappoint.
Perhaps the most amazing and groundbreaking quality about The Birdcage is how removed it is from both illness and insensitivity. Whereas films preceding it were often somber stories about the tribulations of being gay in a conservatively straight world, Nichols and screenwriter Elaine May expose the fallacies of conservatism as traditional values are thrown into a more open-minded space. They don’t care how far the community has fallen so much as how high they can rebuild themselves.
A quiet film that does not demand your tears but earns them. It explores love that lingers, timing that fails, and the silence between what was and what could have been.
