CULTURE  |  MOVIES

The collapse of time and domestic memory: Annie Ernaux’s “The Super 8 Years”

By Tina Qian | April 10, 2024

Ernaux commented, “Film truly captures life and people, even if film is silent.” This is the power of continuous images that blatantly present the unfiltered reality where decorum is barely utilized: Images become extremely impactful when one views them as a tool of reminiscence, and nothing is more brutally honest than the direct display of time through the lens.

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CULTURE  |  MOVIES

Adam Sandler’s ‘Spaceman’: A $40 Million catastrophe?

By Kadin Purath | March 7, 2024

"Spaceman" has the pace and temperament of a film that has something to say beyond its plot but the execution of a Netflix original.

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CULTURE  |  MOVIES

Chronicle Exclusive: ‘Kung Fu Panda 4’ Early Review

By Arnav Jindal | March 7, 2024

The "Kung Fu Panda" series is iconic, and the fourth installment definitely scratches the itch with great comedy, action and heart. Yet, it fails to meet the expectations set by its predecessors.

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CULTURE  |  MOVIES

Jonathan Glazer’s ‘The Zone of Interest’: Understanding evil and representing suffering

By Kadin Purath | February 8, 2024

The choice by Glazer to make a Holocaust film about the family of one its most infamous orchestrators, rather than its victims, is as much a recognition of his inability to engage with the realities of Auschwitz as the Höss’ escape into their garden and playground pool. “The Zone of Interest” offers itself as a parable of the faults that plague us — a film as much about today as 1943.

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CULTURE  |  MOVIES

Review: Trapped 'Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell'... and inside the Duke Screen Society Theater

By Adonis Borges | January 30, 2024

The feature film debut of Vietnamese director Pham Thien An, “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell” dazzles with mystically beautiful long shots that force the audience into Thien’s condition: the emptiness of craving the transcendent and coming up short... over the course of three hours.

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CULTURE  |  MOVIES

Understanding a marriage through a father in 'Lost in Translation'

By Kadin Purath | September 23, 2023

In “Lost in Translation” (2003), an eighteen-year-old Scarlett Johansson and mid-to-late career Bill Murray have a semi-platonic one-week fling in Japan that's influenced as much by director Sofia Coppola's relationship to her father as her crumbling marriage.

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CULTURE  |  MOVIES

Hurt and intimacy in Park Chan-wook’s 'Decision to Leave'

By Annie Zhang | February 14, 2023

2022's South Korean Oscar-nominated movie is a viscerally emotional, destabilizing romantic thriller with an ending that you’ll never be able to forget. 

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CULTURE  |  MOVIES

Blockbusters to see in the first half of 2023

By Zev van Zanten | February 8, 2023

As always, this new year brings with it a new roster of movies to watch.

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CULTURE  |  MOVIES

I’m not Elle Woods, and we’re both fine with that

By Audrey Wang | February 3, 2023

It took me a lot of time to love being a woman because I was always terrified that I would never be taken seriously as one. 

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CULTURE  |  MOVIES

'Sigma cinema' and why he’s literally me

By Audrey Wang | January 25, 2023

If you go to Letterbox right now and search “literally me,” you’ll find that “literally me” can mean everything from ax-murdering Paul Allen to Huey Lewis and the News to making meth in your RV. 

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CULTURE  |  MOVIES

'Black Panther: Wakanda Forever' is a thrilling ride, but it deeply misses Chadwick Boseman

By Zachary Partnoy | November 30, 2022

“Black Panther Will Return,” the credits tell us, in a phrase usually reserved for James Bond. But should she?  

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CULTURE  |  MOVIES

Not all is quiet on the western front

By Zev van Zanten | November 18, 2022

Even with the more modern cinematography, the score, and some minor plot tweaks, “All is Quiet on the Western Front” (2022) does not add much of significant value, essentially repeating the works that came before it.

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CULTURE  |  MOVIES

'Amsterdam' review: The stars do not shine

By Zachary Partnoy | November 17, 2022

I take no pleasure in coming away so unsatisfied from this film.

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CULTURE  |  MOVIES

‘Moonage Daydream’ review: Can you hear me, Major Tom?

By Zachary Partnoy | November 11, 2022

Morgen has no illusions about the impossibility of a definitive take; his recognition of that allows his film to be more personal.

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CULTURE  |  MOVIES

Chaos and Catharsis in ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’

By Annie Zhang | October 31, 2022

Bridging the gap between two cultures divergent in their expressions of love, “Everything Everywhere All At Once” is an Asian story told through American sensibilities. 

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CULTURE  |  MOVIES

Confessions from a reformed Hallmark hater

By JM Stroh | October 27, 2022

“Pumpkin Everything” is gloriously baked — like a good ole pumpkin pie — in everything that’s hilariously sugary and sweet.

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CULTURE  |  MOVIES

The play that goes wrong, the film that goes right

By Zachary Partnoy | October 18, 2022

 “See How They Run” seems to provide emphatic further proof that murder mysteries are making an impressive comeback in modern movies.

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CULTURE  |  MOVIES

Macro-movement in biopics: The fast past, present, and future of the flourishing genre

By JM Stroh | October 17, 2022

The days of the low budget, acting dependent, niche biographical film are long gone. Let me introduce the newest bankable genre: the biopic.

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CULTURE  |  MOVIES

Able was Tilda ere she saw Elba: Old-fashioned desire in ‘Three Thousand Years of Longing’

By Zachary Partnoy | September 24, 2022

The film — with its unpretentious, if indulgent, focus on the meaning of story — arrives at the perfect moment, and has made me wish for more perspectives like it.  

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CULTURE  |  MOVIES

Revolution of (all) time: The obsessed and ephemeral in ‘Blue Island’

By Annie Zhang | September 22, 2022

The nauseating parallels between Hong Kong’s 1989 democracy protests and the 2019 Anti-extradition Law movement have blurred the lines drawn by time.