Nick Kush

In last year’s top 10, I remarked that we’d eventually look back on 2021 as a significant transition year in the history of cinema. Well, allow me to expand (and slightly hedge) on that proclamation:…

In reflecting on the year, a film that always comes up in my mind is Audrey Diwan’s 1960s abortion drama, Happening. Many would point to the film’s startlingly prescient release just weeks before the Dobbs…

There’s a palpable sense of “less is more” in Joanna Hogg’s brand of formalism. Her camera is happy to sit back and observe, only moving very precisely when the scene calls for it. Commonly shooting on…

There must be some kind of small glitch in the Netflix algorithm. In the span of a few weeks, the streamer has released two black-and-white documentaries about a very famous person interviewing someone with Parkinson’s…

It’s almost staggering to think about how long Jonah Hill has been in the public eye at this point. 17 years after he really wanted those goldfish shoes in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, I sometimes have to…

It’s been a more-than-a-decade-long odyssey for Blonde to finally come to fruition. Andrew Dominik was reportedly drawn to the project all the way back in 2010. A few hiccups later — casting shifts, financing issues,…

Nel packs up her late father’s home while simultaneously unpacking memories of their volatile relationship.   Nick Kush: I very much admire Left Over‘s preference for small-stakes character building instead of histrionics. There are no screaming…

Leave it to Claire Denis to create the best representation of the pandemic onscreen yet. There are no Karens yelling over masks, no contagion spreading like wildfire. Instead, masks are a visual motif for the…

I had my come-to-Jesus moment with the MCU while watching Hawkeye a few months back. I had liked WandaVision and Loki enough, so why not try it out, I thought. Ten minutes in, the phone…

I’ll admit it, when Neon announced that Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s new film, Memoria, would embark on a never-ending, roadshow-style film tour across the country forever — meaning there will never be a streaming or Blu-ray release…

Is it weird to say that Adam Sandler is now one of our most consistent actors? Let’s break it down. Dramatic Sandler is on a pretty serious tear with The Meyerowitz Stories (severely underrated), Uncut…

When You Finish Saving the World Is it the least shocking film development ever that Jesse Eisenberg, one of our most anxious, idiosyncratic performers, centered his directorial debut around two highly anxious, idiosyncratic characters? If…

The reported heinous acts committed by the Russian government sound like something straight out of a 1970s political thriller. And that’s probably exactly how they like it. “If you want to kill someone,” Alexei Navalny…

For a brief moment, Sundance 2022 looked like it was going to function as a return to in-person festival moviegoing for the entire industry. Naturally, nature had other plans in store, so the entire festival…

If you’ve watched an indie film or two in your day, odds are you’ve stumbled upon a movie about a white guy who just can’t figure things out. They have no idea what to do…

Sara Dosa’s Fire of Love is truly a sensory overload, and not just because of its staggering archival footage of gorgeous volcanoes. On top of that, it’s edited like a French New Wave film to the tune…

After Yang has one of my favorite recent open credits sequences: after a few muted back-and-forths, Jake (Colin Farrell), his wife Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith), his daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja), and his android Yang (Justin…

Rebecca Hall has been on a tear as of late, starring in one severely disturbing film after the next, while also taking time to direct a very impressive debut feature in Passing (which continues to…

I’ve given up on figuring out whether or not a given year is a “good” year for film. The conclusion is always based on a combination of personal taste and a willingness to explore. A…

Remake cynicism begone, Steven Spielberg’s retelling of West Side Story is pretty damn good. The titan filmmaker managed to inject some classic Spielberg Magic™ into the musical that we’ve been missing in film for some time,…

I often find myself listening to Jóhann Jóhannsson’s compositions as I go about my day, either those tied to the films he scored in the 2010s or his original works. He had a knack for…

We’ve waited and waited, and finally, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune has arrived. It’s a lot to unpack, but it’s undoubtedly one of the biggest moviegoing events of the year. We discuss our general thoughts on the…

The notion that a first-time filmmaker could blend the rugged, depressive existence of scrappy children struggling to get by in one of Glasgow’s most oppressive neighborhoods with a bizarre dream sequence that includes a mouse…

In a shocking twist, an anthology movie that has several shorts from some of our best international filmmakers is really good. The Year of the Everlasting Storm is yet another COVID-19-centered production, except it’s one…

So many pandemic-set films since the beginning of COVID-19 are about the immediacy of it. The near-instantaneous feeling that everything has changed without the time to possibly reckon with what’s happened. Kelsey Egan’s Glasshouse takes…

Almost every conceivable trigger warning is in effect for Rob Jabbaz’s pandemic horror movie, The Sadness. Saying the film isn’t afraid to “go there” is probably the biggest understatement of Fantasia 2021 — it’s undoubtedly the…

A mysterious social experiment brings a group of eccentric strangers together to compete for a prize. It’s the synopsis for many low-budget thrillers and dark comedies. And somehow, Stanleyville feels almost entirely divorced from the subgenre. You’ve…

Sadly for Hugh Jackman, Reminiscence flopped hard this weekend, both critically and financially. Despite the crew wanting more mid-budget movies with movie stars attached to them, Lisa Joy’s directorial debut just didn’t cut it. But…

Despite how much social media is seemingly at the center of our lives, there are still only precious few good movies about the subject. What is it that makes it so hard to capture? Is…

The PR machine for the film industry can sometimes be a nightmare as directors, actors, and others associated with a project do whatever they can to hype it up. After a while, the insane comparisons…