There is a moment in Drift, the character study from filmmaker Anthony Chen, that you know is inevitable. (It’s now playing in New York, opens in L.A. on Feb. 16, and goes wide on Feb. 23.) You spend so much of this carefully constructed film’s running time bracing for it, …
Read More »'Madame Web' Isn't As Bad As You've Heard. It's So Much Worse
Trailers are designed to stir up excitement, the amuse-bouche that whets your appetite for the three-course meal. Occasionally, the oldest marketing trick in the book backfires. When Sony dropped a sneak peek at Madame Web, the newest addition to the company’s roster of Spider-Man–related films and another of their corporate …
Read More »How One Lonely Man's Online Date Turned Into a Bloody Nightmare
Online dating can be a minefield. Your feelings can get hurt. Your confidence can be shaken. Your time can be wasted. And you can wander into a maelstrom of murder, arson, and identity theft that leaves you questioning your previously established reality. This is the point at which a situation …
Read More »'The Taste of Things' Is the Best Food-Porn Movie of the Year
Movies are designed to dazzle through sound and vision. That leaves three out of five senses untapped, at least until cinema reaches its inevitable maximum-immersive “feelie” stage. The Taste of Things, the latest from the French-Vietnamese filmmaker Tran Anh Hung, is one of those rare works that gives you the …
Read More »'One Day': Netflix's Time-Travel Romance Will Leave You Frustrated
Each episode of Netflix‘s One Day takes place on July 15 of successive years, from 1988 through 2007. Each year, we check in on the evolving relationship between idle rich boy Dexter Mayhew (Leo Woodall) and the more serious-minded Emma Morley (Ambika Mod), who start out as would-be lovers, instead …
Read More »'Bob Marley: One Love' Gives Us a Reggae Icon Minus the Rebel Soul
In 1976, Bob Marley was the most famous person in Jamaica. He was also a marked man. The star had agreed to play a free concert dubbed “Smile Jamaica.” He’d even written a theme song for the event. Though the show was conceived as a way to quell the rising …
Read More »'Perfect Days' Features the Best Screen Performance in Recent Memory
You may know Kōji Yakusho as the oyster-slurping mystery man from the noodle-Western extraordinaire Tampopo (1985). Perhaps you remember him as the depressed suburbanite who ballroom dances his blues away in the international feel-good hit Shall We Dance? (1996). He’s the reformed felon in the Cannes-winning character study The Eel …
Read More »'Lisa Frankenstein' Will Make You Miss Tim Burton. A Lot.
Pity poor Lisa Swallows (Kathryn Newton), and not just for the unfortunate name. Her mother was murdered by an ax-wielding serial killer; Lisa was in the house, hiding in a backroom when it happened. Dad (Joe Chrest) remarried soon after, which meant that Lisa suddenly found herself spending her senior …
Read More »'Orion and the Dark' Is 'Inside Out' for Anxious Insomniacs
It’s easy for children to be feel apprehensive and overwhelmed by the world. (To be fair, it’s also easy for a lot of adults to feel apprehensive and overwhelmed by the world, which, you know — thank god for therapists!) You could do a lot worse than to show a …
Read More »'Mr. & Mrs. Smith' Is So Good It'll Make You Forget About Brangelina
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Rolling Stone may receive an affiliate commission. Even by the standards of a Hollywood ecosystem where everything is IP, and IP is everything, the idea of adapting a TV show from Mr. & Mrs. Smith …
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