Escape the Undertaker (2021) Director: Ben Simms Starring: The Undertaker, Big E, Kofi Kingston, Xavier Woods World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) is so woven into pop culture that for many people the word “wrestling” instantly conjures Vince McMahon’s entertainment empire. The company’s golden eras—Hulkamania and the Attitude Era—are long past, and mainstream breakout stars from the … Read more
“If it bleeds, we can kill it.” The Predator stands out among cinematic extraterrestrials as a merciless hunter: a masked, technologically advanced warrior that stalks its prey from the shadows. Cloaked by a near-invisible device and armed with heat-seeking weapons, it methodically hunts humans, often keeping the skulls and spinal cords of its victims as … Read more
Ride the Eagle (2021) Director: Trent O’Donnell Screenwriters: Jake Johnson, Trent O’Donnell Starring: Jake Johnson, Susan Sarandon, D’Arcy Carden, J.K. Simmons Emerging from the limitations of the pandemic, Ride the Eagle is a small, heartfelt film born of constrained creativity. Jake Johnson and director Trent O’Donnell, collaborators with a background in comedy television, crafted this … Read more
Isle of Dogs (2018) Director: Wes Anderson Screenwriters: Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola Starring: Bryan Cranston, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Harvey Keitel, Greta Gerwig, Yoko Ono After the critical and commercial success of The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson returned in 2018 with the stop-motion animated feature Isle of Dogs. Building on his earlier … Read more
Delphine’s Prayers/Les prières de Delphine (2021) Director: Rosine Mbakam Rosine Mbakam’s latest feature documentary, Delphine’s Prayers, offers a powerful, intimate portrait of a young Cameroonian woman navigating life as an immigrant in Belgium. Mbakam, known for her empathetic films about African migrant women, frames this work as an extended, candid interview with Delphine, a 30-year-old … Read more
Songs for the River (2021) Director: Charlotte Ginsborg Charlotte Ginsborg’s documentary Songs for the River offers a concise, moving portrait of one small riverside community in London as it navigates the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. Filmed between April 2020 and January 2021, the film centers on the residents of Brandrams Wharf, a riverside social … Read more
Juste un mouvement / Just A Movement (2021) Director: Vincent Meessen “Cinema can serve to explore the creation of forms, their embryology.” Jean-Luc Godard Vincent Meessen’s documentary Juste un mouvement (Just A Movement) revisits the life, ideas and political legacy of Omar Blondin Diop, a Senegalese student activist who briefly appeared in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1967 … Read more
Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (2021) Director: Jonathan Butterell Screenwriter: Tom MacRae Starring: Max Harwood, Sarah Lancashire, Lauren Patel, Richard E. Grant, Samuel Bottomley, Ralph Ineson The movie musical has a unique resilience in popular cinema: it can be nostalgic, glitzy, moving and defiantly theatrical all at once. In 2021 the genre continued to thrive, and … Read more
Adam Sandler has been one of Hollywood’s most recognizable movie stars for nearly thirty years. He rose to fame as a cast member on Saturday Night Live in the early-to-mid 1990s and then parlayed that success into a leading film career. Sandler became widely known for irreverent Generation X comedies such as Billy Madison and, … Read more
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) Director: Destin Daniel Cretton Screenwriters: Dave Callaham, Destin Daniel Cretton, Andrew Lanham Starring: Simu Liu, Awkwafina, Tony Leung, Meng’er Zhang, Fala Chen, Michelle Yeoh, Florian Muneanu, Andy Le, Benedict Wong Shang-Chi’s journey from a supporting character in 1970s comic books to a leading figure on the … Read more
