I don’t like walking away from movies and thinking, “Well at least it wasn’t pro-torture.” But this is a valid concern in Kathryn Bigelow’s follow-up to 2013’s blockbuster Zero Dark Thirty—a movie on the hunt for Bin Laden that sloppily suggested tha …Read more

Lady Macbeth opens with a marriage ceremony. The bride, Katherine (Florence Pugh) tentatively goes through the motions, as the groom remains out of the frame. That night, shy and polite, our bride repeatedly assures everyone she is fine, not too cold …Read more

A young girl (Oona Laurence) wanders through the forest, singing softly to herself, searching of mushrooms. It is 1863 and we are in the deep South. Canons rumble far off. The air is drenched in light, and cicadas maintain a thrum of sound. With a st …Read more

The Bad Batch opens with an institutional announcement over the title screens, alerting guards to exercise utmost caution around ‘bad batch’ prisoners. Once we are finally given a picture to go with the dire, looping announcement, we see an absurdly …Read more

Last March in Manhattan, a bronze statue of a spunky young girl was installed such that she appeared to face down the famed charging bull of Wall Street. Fists to hips, legs akimbo, she is a cute, anodyne expression of female power. I couldn’t help t …Read more

Letters from Baghdad opens with a title cards that tell us how the tragedy of the present-day Middle East began a century ago, and how “one woman was at the center of it all.” This woman, Gertrude Bell, was a brilliant adventure-woman whose expertise …Read more

The Commune opens with a polished, middle-aged couple and their teenage daughter touring a mansion. We soon learn that the father, Eric, (Ulrich Thomsen), inherited this dour and cavernous house, and his wife, Anna, (Trine Dyrholm) is angling to move …Read more

Julian Assange pours himself whiskey with ceremony. No opening to Laura Poitras’ new documentary could shock less. The tilt, the swirl, the self-satisfied quaff — I could have guessed. Such is the predominant emotion that one gets from Risk. Although …Read more

The world is urbanizing at an astonishing rate, and if we aren’t mindful in that process, the results could be dire. So says Matt Tyrnauer in his documentary, Citizen Jane: Battle for the City. In order to present the debate of urban development, he …Read more

In Newton, director Amit Masurkar has created a finely tuned little movie that accomplishes the rare feat of satisfying precisely the parameters it sets for itself. It seems intuitively wrong to use the word “small” anywhere around the topic of India …Read more