Eileen Jones is a film critic at Jacobin, host of the Filmsuck podcast, and author of Filmsuck, USA.
It’s been nearly 50 years since Charles Bronson first mowed down New York muggers in Death Wish. But defenses of the recent killing of Jordan Neely suggest that the film’s reactionary, Wild West–style vigilante violence still holds the imagination of many.
Do you want to see a bunch of Nazis get the bloody, gory treatment they deserve in the wilds of Northern Finland? Of course you do. Then go see Sisu.
In the new series White House Plumbers, a brilliant send-up of the Watergate scandal, Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux star as Richard Nixon’s bumbling covert operators. It’s approaching a Coen brothers level of satiric genius.
Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret. is probably a nice, worthwhile coming-of-age movie. But it comes off as a bland fantasy film about a land peopled by smiling denizens in sunny dreamscapes who have such mild problems that they aren’t actually problems.
In the 1970s, the public flocked to movies about the US government’s shadowy misdeeds.
Even a respected auteur like director David Lowery can’t save Peter Pan & Wendy, yet another bland live-action adaptation of a Disney classic — this time with a dash of 2020s pop feminism.
Critics adore artsy auteur filmmaker Ari Aster, director of hits like Midsommar and Hereditary — they’re even willing to pretend his new surrealist comedy Beau Is Afraid is hilarious. It’s not.
In the reboot of David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, Rachel Weisz plays twin gynecologists slowly unraveling. The gorgeous, chilly atmosphere — and Weisz’s double performance — are mesmerizing.
Harry Belafonte, who died earlier today at age 96, was well known for his groundbreaking music career and civil rights activism. But in his early years, he appeared poised to become a major film star. We revisit two of his forgotten early classics here.
Beef tells the story of a chance road-rage encounter that blossoms into a modern feud. Director Lee Sung Jin says it’s about “how hard it is to be alive,” but the show’s cross-class fantasy logic points at the powder keg of growing alienation in our society.
In Renfield, Nicholas Hoult is a delight as Dracula’s much-abused personal assistant. But even Nicolas Cage as the Count himself can’t keep the movie on track.
Air’s origin story about the Michael Jordan–endorsed sneaker is far too high on its own supply.
Steven Knight’s new adaptation of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations adds drug addiction, the slave trade and even sadomasochistic sex. But lurid flourishes alone can’t save this adaptation.
In John Wick: Chapter 4, Keanu Reeves’s puppy-avenging assassin returns for one last fever dream of violence and mayhem, giving viewers a final chance to watch John Wick seek the kind of revenge on the wealthy and all-powerful that we all dream about.
Emily Brontë is one of the most uniquely brilliant women writers who ever lived, the perfect subject for a feminist biopic. She deserves better than the shallow pop feminism of the new movie Emily.
The first two seasons of Party Down were both honest and affectionate as the series satirized the lives of Hollywood aspirants working dead-end jobs. The show’s long-delayed third season retains that winning formula.
While 65 starring Adam Driver isn’t a good movie, it does paint a dystopian portrait of terrible health insurance across the universe that is, unfortunately for us Americans, all too believable.
Cocaine Bear, a pretty mediocre black comedy about a bear that goes on a cocaine-fueled rampage in 1980s Georgia, is wildly successful with critics and audiences alike. It’s testament to a real craving for dark, gruesome, off-the-chain laughs right now.
Apple’s new series Hello Tomorrow! tries to milk Mad Men postwar pathos from a Jetsons premise. But “difficult men” prestige TV has run out of gas.
Sarah Polley’s film Women Talking depicts the brutal true story of rape in a Mennonite colony. It’s a poor fit for the oversimplified, “you go, girl” feminist message of its framing.