After Yang, written and directed by Kogonada, centers on a family whose android malfunctions, sending their young daughter Mika reeling. Mika, played by a precocious Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja, was adopted from China, and tense married couple Jake (Colin Farrell) and Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith) acquired her a brother, Yang, from a company called Second Sibling. Although Yang (a thoughtful Justin H. Min) is an AI, he’s been a human-like companion for the family. When he breaks, during a family dance-off competition,…

The past is always present, lurking in the shadows like a mysterious superhero. Or, at least, that’s the thesis behind director Matt Reeves’ new interpretation of Gotham’s beloved caped crusader in The Batman, a gritty, film noir take intended as a reboot of the franchise. Originally planned as a vehicle for Ben Affleck’s bland Batman, Reeves’ version hits left of center, offering a vision of the character not yet explored on film.

Batman, played with general success by Robert Pattinson,…

The worst thing to be said about Encanto, the milestone 60th film from Walt Disney Animation Studios, is that it feels like a Disney movie. From its predictably gorgeous yet unimaginative visuals, to its familiar songs and predictable story, the film does feel rather safe despite being superficially groundbreaking for the studio. And yet, when the film dives into the specificity of its portrayal of Colombia or its themes which share similarities with the seminal novel One Hundred Years of…

We need a lot of things at the movies we are not getting. What we do not need (or so I thought) is another West Side Story. For one thing, it is everywhere already. Even the local high school in the Connecticut town where I live just presented a perfectly decent production of the great but overworked musical by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. So why are we knocking ourselves out standing in line to see yet another one? And…

Tom Holland does his best version of Indiana Jones in Uncharted, a mediocre take on a very good video game franchise. The film is based on Naughty Dog’s extremely popular action-adventure series, and alongside the excitement of the video games, this two-hour jaunt into Nathan Drake’s world feels limp, at best. Director Ruben Fleischer does his best to bring flashy set pieces and tensely-wrought action sequences into the narrative, but for most of the movie you wish you were the…

Dog may be man’s best friend, but Dog, a snooze about a boring 1500-mile road trip shared by a dog and a man—both war-ravaged, brain-damaged soldiers—should have stayed in the kennel.

In his first film in five years, Channing Tatum plays Jackson Briggs, an Army Ranger in the Pacific Northwest wounded in Afghanistan, who is anxious to get back into uniform to prove his competency. Maybe, says his commanding officer, if he consents to drive a fellow Ranger, a huge…

The Pact

From Denmark, The Pact is a dour, sobering portrait of literary sensation Baroness Karen von Blixen at age 63, after she lost both her beloved farm in Africa and her lover, adventurer Denys Finch Hatton, in a plane crash. In the cherished film Out of Africa, they were played memorably by Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. No such glamor here. The Baroness is played, still coldly beautiful but ravaged with syphilis, by the distinguished Danish actress Birthe Neumann,…

The Automat

I didn’t grow up in the frenzy and fascination of New York, but it seems written in stone that I didn’t really start to live until after I got there. It was the winter of 1960 and from the dirt and the noise to the glamor and the grit, everything held an endless allure as my career grew wings and so did my identity. As anyone who knew and loved the city in those days will tell you…