Film
Drones, staches & space opera fashion
“I Love Boosters” ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 3.5 out of 4. Rapper-turned-director Boots Riley burst onto the movie scene in 2018 with “Sorry to Bother You,” a dystopian comedy about a call-center drone who uncovers a Silicon Valley plot to create a race of “equisapiens” —- horse-human hybrids to displace the labor force. The wildly inventive “I […]
Reunite with some classic films
Schools may be letting out, but it’s Reunion Week at the Brattle Theatre, a reliably eclectic annual series of films celebrating their 25th, 50th, or 75th anniversary. The series kicks off Friday with two very different New York classics hitting the big 5-0 this year: Chantal Akerman’s winsome essay film “News from Home” (1976), in […]
Films on relationships, one remarkable, one nightmarish
“Remarkably Brilliant Creatures” ⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 2.5 out of 4. Based on the bestselling 2022 novel by Shelby Van Pelt and directed by Olivia Newman (“Where the Crawdads Sing”), “Remarkably Bright Creatures” channels Nicholas Sparks by way of centenarian wildlife expert David Attenborough. If that sounds like a lot of tentacles, it should, as the film […]
Kurosawa, Kurt & Jodie, Chaplin, and doppelgangers
Even among the rich, eerie world of Japanese horror cinema, Kiyoshi Kurosawa stands alone. His films mix traditional Japanese forces and spirits with the more mundane horrors of the modern world (Kurosawa’s most recent feature, last year’s “Cloud,” is a morality tale about a crooked eBay reseller). In celebration of the release of Kurosawa’s new […]