Joker (2019) Director: Todd Phillips Screenwriter: Todd Phillips, Scott Silver Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy, Brett Cullen, Marc Maron “What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash?” After the fanfare, the awards, and the controversies that … Read more

The 2010s were a transformative decade for the horror genre. After the J-horror and “torture porn” trends of the 2000s, the decade that followed brought a wave of original, stylistically bold films—especially in the latter half of the ten years. Many movies that once might have been relegated to cult status through DVD or VHS … Read more

How a character is first introduced on screen matters. Whether it’s the hero, the villain, a vivid supporting player or a brief cameo, that first moment shapes how the audience understands and remembers them. These opening scenes teach us to love, hate, fear or sympathize with characters in ways that guide the rest of the … Read more

The Last Tree (2019) Director: Shola Amoo Screenwriter: Shola Amoo Starring: Sam Adewunmi, Denise Black, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Nicholas Pinnock Shola Amoo, who drew praise for his debut feature A Moving Image (2016), returns with The Last Tree, a thoughtful British drama that follows a young Black man growing up amid poverty, class tension and racial … Read more

The Farewell (2019) Director: Lulu Wang Screenwriter: Lulu Wang Starring: Awkwafina, Zhao Shuzhen, Diana Lin, Tzi Ma, Lu Hong Overview At first glance, The Farewell might seem to follow familiar indie-family dramedy territory: a creatively inclined protagonist, fraught family relationships and a mix of awkward comedy with an unconventional examination of grief. It would be … Read more

Ad Astra (2019) Director: James Gray Screenwriters: James Gray, Ethan Gross Starring: Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Donald Sutherland The film opens in the hushed, delicate void of space, where the black of the cosmos frames the vivid blue and white of Earth. Brad Pitt’s Roy McBride, a seasoned astronaut and systems engineer, … Read more

A recent Reddit post on /r/StarWars ignited a heated discussion about Snoke’s lack of on-screen backstory and whether that omission weakens the current Star Wars saga. Frustration among fans centers on how this mysterious antagonist, who clearly influences the Sequel Trilogy, has been given so little exposition in the films. One user, /u/agoddamnjoke, summed up … Read more

Rambo: Last Blood (2019) Director: Adrian Grunberg Screenwriters: Matt Cirulnick, Sylvester Stallone Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Paz Vega, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Adriana Barraza, Yvette Monreal The earlier Rambo films often put the spotlight on people caught in geopolitical violence—veterans neglected at home, soldiers left behind, and civilians trapped in foreign conflicts. First Blood examined the treatment of … Read more

This article was updated to include Yesterday (2019) on 24th September 2019. English director Danny Boyle has been a defining presence in British and international cinema for nearly three decades. Since his breakthrough with Shallow Grave in 1994, Boyle has moved confidently between independent films and mainstream projects, maintaining a distinctive visual style and delivering … Read more

Downton Abbey (2019) Director: Michael Engler Screenwriter: Julian Fellowes Starring: Hugh Bonneville, Jim Carter, Michelle Dockery, Elizabeth McGovern, Maggie Smith, Imelda Staunton, Penelope Wilton. As a long-time admirer of the television series, I approached the Downton Abbey film with equal parts enthusiasm and apprehension. The series concluded with many characters’ journeys neatly resolved, so the … Read more