Critic’s Notebook
Feminism comes to “Toy Story”
The latest installment of “Toy Story” is a romantic comedy in the classic mold, featuring Woody (Tom Hanks) as the [...]
Bad times get worse
There is reason to believe that 2018's “Bad Times” could have been a very good film. The contained, isolated setting [...]
The bonds that tie
The scene that best defines “The Sisters Brothers” takes place along a river bank in the remote, anarchic, gold-rush California [...]
Peeling back Peele
For director and writer Jordan Peele, there’s always another layer to be revealed — a subterranean one. In “Get Out!” [...]
An artist bears witness
Director and writer Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Oscar-nominated “Never Look Away,” loosely based on the life of top-selling German artist [...]
Hot blood, cold war
In a year in cinema dominated by both race and films “based on a true story,” “Cold War,” filmed in [...]
“Wisdom born of pain”
After a first enigmatic scene —buckets of soapy water flowing over a stone surface — it seems clear early on [...]
What’s to forgive?
When we’re introduced to Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy), she’s just been fired (apparently from "The New Yorker" magazine, where she [...]
A family, coming apart
The strength of Paul Dano’s directing debut, “Wildlife,” based on the eponymous 1990 novel by one of America’s best novelists, [...]
He did it, but why?
It’s convenient and often useful to classify films: this one’s a buddy film, that one’s a rom-com, another’s a chick [...]
Anxious youth
Director Bo Burnham, in his first feature film, vividly captures the unrelenting anxiety of the early teenage years in “Eighth [...]
Black man, white voice
The film's title is “Sorry to Bother You," and that's also the first line of the script that call center [...]