Here are some reviews of films coming out at the theater this week as well as others that may be in theaters or newly on home video.
Opening: Feb. 11, 2022
Wide (United States)
Blacklight
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Death on the Nile
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Marry Me
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Limited (United States)
Catch the Fair One
Fabian: Going to the Dogs
- Excerpt: Kästner’s tale of a young writer in the Weimar Republic who sees his life and career unraveling parallel to the Nazis’ rise to power has now been adapted to the screen by German filmmaker and cultural critic Dominik Graf. Starring two of Germany’s most compelling actors in Tom Schilling (A Coffee in Berlin) and Albrecht Schuch (System Crasher), along with rising star Saskia Rosendahl (Lore), Fabian: Going to the Dogs is a sprawling tale of hedonism and heartbreak set during one of the most infamous periods of upheaval in European history.
2022 Films In Theaters Now In Select Areas
Jackass Forever
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Moonfall
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Scream
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Sundown
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The Abandon
- Excerpt: Official Closing Night Film of the 2022 Mammoth Film Festival
Alice
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Alice isn’t about edification as far as the “true events” that could allow something like this to happen. It’s about catharsis. I think it forgets that sometimes.
Book of Love
Kirsten Hawkes @ Parent Previews
Book of Love
Betty Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Is Book of Love a fun movie? Lots of humor sure worked for me!
Definition Please
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: [Its] strength is its authenticity and normalization of minorities away from stereotypes. Unlike Monica’s words, our origins and identities aren’t so stringently defined.
Donkeyhead
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: No matter how funny Donkeyhead can prove, it’s also quite devastating. Just because the other three were able to survive [childhood] better doesn’t mean they avoided scars.
The Fabulous Filipino Brothers
Give Me Pity!
- Excerpt: It’s Sissy St. Claire’s big night, although things don’t go quite as planned. Amanda Kramer’s sharp dissection of the medium continues as she takes us back to an era of glitz, glamour and psychedelic existentialism.
Italian Studies
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Random events leave marks. Memory interprets what those marks are. It’s by no means a perfect system, but it’s what makes us human.
Master
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Diallo throws the kitchen sink [of themes and motives] on-screen. You must jump aboard and let [her] take you station to station because there’s no express train to clarity.
Maxima
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Inspiring, unexpectedly joyful portrait of the shy, funny, humble woman battling environmental disaster, corporate malfeasance, and civic corruption. A harbinger of the resource wars that are coming.
Palm Trees and Power Lines
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Depicting [sexual grooming] is neither entertaining nor exciting. Dack can therefore push her narrative forward with methodical precision instead.
The Pink Cloud
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Gerbase [is] presenting things with a level of authenticity that demands introspection. This isn’t satire. These are people like [us] being pushed to their breaking points.
Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A loving appreciation, but never a blinkered one, of the punk philosopher, a woman ahead of her time and still timely: iconoclastic, creative, ever-searching, a cultural observer who saw deep and far.
Private Desert
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: [His characters aren’t] reduced to one-dimensional stereotypes. He draws them as equals insofar as their inability to fully embrace who they are away from external forces.
Shari
- Excerpt: Experimental short filmmaker Yoshigai Nao looks at nature in and out of balance in this idiosyncratic observational documentary about rural Japan.
Something in the Dirt
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: It’s a case where logistics seem to dictate content. The whole looks great and the acting is solid, though. Fans should have a good time.
Three Minutes: A Lengthening
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
2021 Films
Antlers
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Being the Ricardos
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Drive My Car
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Free Guy
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The French Dispatch
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Nightmare Alley
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Titane
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The Worst Person in the World
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Bad Luck Banging, or Loony Porn
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: The director of BAD LUCK BANGING gives us a view of the current economic status of Romania which helps the viewer to place the story in time, as well as a film about attitudes towards sex, ethnicities, nationalism, and other hot topics.
Dogs Don’t Wear Pants
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
France
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: In FRANCE, France de Meurs (played by Lea Seydoux) is a telejournalist who goes through a personal crisis and tries to change her style.
Memoria
Josh Taylor @ The Forgetful Film Critic
- Excerpt: Apichatpong Weerasethakul, in his inimitable way, exhorts us to marvel at both the mundane and inexplicable wonders of our existence in the universe.
Mothers of the Revolution
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Retro footage and sharply executed dramatizations tell the tale of an audacious multiyear all-women anti-nuke protest in the 1980s, revolutionary action that changed its heroines and saved the world.
Shadow in the Cloud
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Swallow
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Wife of a Spy
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: We have seen a lot of spy thrillers set in Europe, usually with American or British spies, but WIFE OF A SPY is a bit different. This, the latest film from Kiyoshi Kurosawa (not relation to Akira Kurosawa), is set in 1940 in Japan, and has as its spy a Japanese businessman.
