Vince Mancini

Once Upon A Time may be a more languid journey than usual, but it gets to a familiar place eventually. In a way Tarantino has turned himself into the kind of Spaghetti Western anti-hero that’s always obsessed him — flawed but ultimately triumphant. I’m still happy to be along for the ride.

It’s the concept we need right now, with an execution that’s sometimes lacking. Like slaying the rich with a rusty guillotine.

While I cannot resist an hour plus of delightful Sam Jacksonian shit talk, neither can I in good conscience recommend you staying for the entirety of this film.

Waititi spends so much energy trying to convince us that this story is universal that he often loses what made it novel in the first place.

Some of the men’s fancies are beautifully visualized (including what I will describe only as an extremely vaginal apparition), but they remain just that — fancies. It’s never clear that what’s happening in the men’s wizened heads alters the world outside it.

Double Tap isn’t a worthwhile sequel, especially after a decade, but it’s certainly a number two.

The Laundromat doesn’t do a good enough job tying threads together.

Honey Boy crystallizes everything Shia Labeouf’s performance art persona from 2009 until now seemed to be trying to say: that authenticity and authorship are dull considerations compared to insight and emotional truth.

It’s a remarkable work of feral filmmaking that makes everything else feel domesticated by comparison.

Richard Jewell is ultimately a character assassination that rests on hackneyed narratives and lazy assumptions. Which makes it exactly the kind of thing it thinks it’s railing against.

1917 is a movie’s movie, more showpiece than insight, a kind of flashy sizzle reel of The Great War’s horrors. It will rattle your speakers but probably not your soul. Nothing wrong with that, but better to know going in.

Dolemite Is My Name is escapism, but it’s also not mindless escapism.

Despite some interesting wrinkles and a few jokes here and there, Dark Fate is what all Terminators since T2 have been to some extent: a little too reverent to T2 — not only about time travel but an attempt to perform it.

It’s the rare riff on Shakespeare that actually feels like a living story and not something to be tacked to the wall like a tapestry.

Suffice it to say, there’s very little flash to Little Women and a whole lot substance. It doesn’t scream what it is. It nurtures our appreciation gradually so that when we finally realize that we’re truly in love, it feels that much sweeter. It’s one of the most successful adaptations I’ve seen in a long time.

Mostly it’s just a joy to watch these two actors face off in front of grand tapestries and stunning frescos. Two Popes has a gentle but winning sense of humor, and the two make an adorable couple.

It’s an impressive movie in many ways, dizzyingly complex and intensely brainy, but if you don’t buy into the complex plot and its many (MANY) twists, they tend to be more tiresome than exhilarating. It’s a loving, labyrinthine homage to a genre I’m not sure deserves it.

It’s A-actors in a B-movie shot by competent craftsmen. Amazing what holding the camera steady can do, isn’t it? Simple pleasures delivered simply — there’s nothing wrong with that.

At times, watching Nic Cage over emote every single line and bad guys get iced by killer monkeys is as sublime as it sounds.

Low Tide is wonderfully shot and acted, and compelling for most of its run time. It’s a shame that it goes out on its least compelling beat.

Parasite doesn’t attempt to solve the world’s problems, or even to entirely explain them. It’s a woolly meditation from one of our woolliest meditators. Bong Joon-ho cements his place as one of the greats.

Joker is a beautifully shot, wonderfully compelling movie that ends in horrific manner. That it’s initially so easy to love is exactly what makes it so capable of disturbing and nauseating us in the end; we couldn’t be queasy if we weren’t invested.

The Death Of Dick Long is a fantastic movie but also a wonderful lesson in storytelling. Every person believes deep down that they’re the hero of their own story. Treating them that way, as people and not punchlines, paradoxically makes for much better punchlines.

Can a movie be simultaneously infuriating and inspiring? Ad Astra (“to the stars” in Latin, because the kids love Latin) is director James Gray’s biggest, boldest, most ambitious and epic film to date, and easily his best. And yet… you know how some filmmakers seem simpático and others just rub you the wrong way? Gray is the latter for me.

Hustlers is solid, with fantastic performances, but it’s so similar to so many scam movies that came before it that it suffers a little from the expectation that it will go further.

This movie is the product of truly deranged minds. It’s a must-see.

It Chapter 2 is like this rumbling ball of smooshed together fiction tropes — kids on bikes! bullies vs outcasts! conquering your fears! scary clowns! bad guys who drool! — that rapidly disintegrates as it speeds toward an ending. It’s the disintegration that makes it interesting (well, that and the competent staging and acting).

It’s not that Hobbs & Shaw attracts dumbness so much as inspires it. You watch it with your mouth dangling half-open, chuckling like Beavis And Butthead, and that’s part of the appeal. Spectacle doesn’t need to be smart.