★★★★ From just its synopsis and promotional material, writer-director Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter will seem familiar. It’s a crime-revenge thriller grappling with themes of atonement, forgiveness, and the role of violence in both. The protagonist is a stoic loner who reflects obsessively on his life’s condition and projects mystery to hide his haunted past. […]
Alexander Harrison
Alex Harrison is an emerging film critic getting a Masters in Film Studies in his spare time
Posted inArts & Culture
What’s Up at the Movies: We Review “The Green Knight”
★★★★★ The title of David Lowrey’s The Green Knight, now available for online rental after spending some time exclusively in theaters, strikes me as particularly important. The film adapts Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a 14th-century poem by an unknown author, and takes at least the bones of its story: Gawain (Dev Patel), young […]
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What’s Up at the Movies: We Review “Coda”
★★★★ After premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival to quick acclaim, culminating in multiple award wins, Siân Heder’s CODA broke the festival acquisition record when Apple paid over $25 million for its worldwide distribution rights. Having seen it, the reason is obvious: it’s a well-made version of that coming-of-age story you’ve seen a thousand […]
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What’s Up at the Movies: We review “Zola”
★★★★ There is very little about Janicza Bravo’s Zola that isn’t interesting. Its twisty, shocking, (mostly) true story is adapted from a viral thread of 148 tweets by A’Ziah “Zola” King from October 2015, as well as the Rolling Stone profile that followed a month later. Its aesthetic, soundscape, and score (by Mica Levi of […]
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What’s Up at the Movies: We Review “Black Widow”
★★★★ Fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have been waiting a long time for Black Widow, and not just because the pandemic delayed it a year. Since being introduced in 2010’s Iron Man 2, Scarlett Johansson had played the Russian-spy-turned-S.H.I.E.L.D.-agent Natasha Romanoff six more times, and never in a film that bore her character’s name. […]
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What’s Up at the Movies: We Review “Censor”
★★★ A movie having a knockout premise can be both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, the creative team gets to work from a great starting point, and that initial elevator pitch is enough on its own to get people interested enough to buy tickets. On the other hand, there’s now pressure […]
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What’s Up at the Movies: We Review “In the Heights”
★★★★ In the Heights is one of the many movies coming out this year that was meant to have released in 2020, and in this case, the delay feels like a gift. We are transitioning into a summer more optimistic than the one before, and there is no better film to kick it off than […]
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What’s Up at the Movies: We review “A Quiet Place, Part II”
★★★★ Watching the prologue of A Quiet Place Part II, which returns to the day that the noise-sensitive monsters of the first film arrived on Earth, I realized that post-apocalyptic cinema should thrive in the post-pandemic era. These films rely on a certain kind of nostalgia for a way of life abruptly lost, the before […]
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What’s Up at the Movies: We Review “Cruella”
★★★ It’s not controversial to say Disney’s recent string of live-action reboots, despite routinely making enormous amounts of money, have been pretty weak. Even when there are talented creatives behind them applying a vision that shouldbe interesting, the final product usually feels weirdly diluted, a mildly entertaining two hours that you’ll struggle to remember after […]
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What’s Up at the Movies: We Review “The Underground Railroad”
★★★★★ Barry Jenkins’ The Underground Railroad, a ten-episode miniseries available to stream on Amazon Prime, is the latest example of what I like to call the chaptered movie. It’s a form that, with its union of auteur-driven vision and episodic storytelling, sits right on the line between film and television, and is a big reason […]
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What’s Up at the Movies: We Review “Those Who Wish Me Dead”
★★ There are times when my target wordcount for these reviews feels restricting, when I run out of space after only scratching the surface of what I wanted to say and have to be content with calling up friends to discuss the rest. That excess of material, be it praise or criticism, is a good […]
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What’s Up at the Movies: We Review “Monster”
★★★ A movie’s road to distribution is not always a straight line, and sometimes, through no fault of its own, it ends up releasing a few years late. Monster, the feature debut of veteran music video director Anthony Mandler, is the latest example, making its way to Netflix this week after premiering at Sundance all […]
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What’s Up at the Movies: We review “The Mitchells vs The Machines”
Sitting atop the expanding heap of streaming services, Netflix is a major, accessible platform, but it hardly guarantees a wide audience. There’s always the chance for something to take the world by storm, but with their commitment to add at least one new movie in every week of 2021, a lot of their releases come […]
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What’s Up at the Movies: We Review “Mortal Kombat”
Hollywood has a troubled history with video games. While they sometimes generate nice returns at the box office, video game adaptations never score above mixed with critics (the best reception I found was for Detective Pikachu in 2019). Never mind that the first Pirates of the Caribbean turned a theme-park ride into a fun adventure […]
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What’s Up at the Movies: 2021 Oscar Picks from Film Critic Alexander Harrison
In my Academy Awards Snubs feature last week, I wrote that debating the nominations is part of the fun of the annual Oscars-madness, and I certainly enjoyed it – it’s arguably the more important of these two write-ups for me as a critic, celebrating the worthy contributions to film culture in 2020 that were overlooked. […]
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What’s Up at the Movies: We review “Nobody”
If the financial success of Godzilla vs Kong is any indication, moviegoers are in need of some mindless entertainment, and while you won’t find me endorsing a (fundamentally misguided) argument that this year’s Oscar nominees are especially sad, I certainly share the hankering. GvK might have scratched that initial itch for many, but those who […]
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What’s Up at the Movies: Academy Award Snubs
Like it or not, the Academy Awards are a big deal. Even if you consider some of the festival prizes more prestigious, the Oscars generate an enormous amount of attention and press from across the globe. Getting recognized by them can really impact a film’s success, especially when it comes to the “Big 5” categories: […]
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What’s Up at the Movies: We review the Oscar “Shorts”
Unless they are paired with the latest Pixar movie, short films tend to go unnoticed by the general viewing public. They offer filmmakers at the beginning of their career a way to hone their craft and get noticed by the industry, and a director’s first feature will often expand on a story concept they first […]
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What’s up at the Movies: We review Godzilla vs. Kong
While last year still saw some great new releases, movie theaters all but disappeared in 2020, and one type of movie in particular disappeared right along with them: blockbusters. Other than Tenet, which more than anything gave the industry’s optimistic pandemic timeline a swift kick in the pants, the closest we got to those big-budget […]
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What’s Up at the Movies: We Review “The Father”
Most of this year’s Academy Awards contenders were widely available when the nominations dropped earlier this month. The exception? Florian Zeller’s The Father, which picked up six nods to put it in a multi-way tie for the second-most. While it has played in theaters for about a month, Zeller’s film is now available for online […]
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What’s Up at the movies: We review Zach Snyder’s Justice League
It’s not unusual these days for a superhero movie to be a major cultural event, but Zack Snyder’s Justice League is different. For the uninitiated: Zack Snyder was the director at the creative center of the DC Extended Universe designed to rival Marvel’s growing success, but his second DCEU movie, 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn […]
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What’s Up at the Movies: We Review “Cherry”
With everyone preoccupied on whether movie theaters will survive the pandemic, it’s easy to miss the streaming revolution happening right beneath our feet: Netflix and Hulu aren’t the game’s only big-money players anymore. Knowing this town ain’t big enough for all of them, the new kids on the block are making plays for our attention, […]
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What’s Up at the Movies: We Review “Raya and the Last Dragon”
Continuing their experiment in the world of digital releases, Disney has made their new animated film Raya and the Last Dragon simultaneously available in theaters and on their streaming service, Disney+. Raya marks the second time they have released a movie using Premier Access, which requires a one-time $30 fee on top of a Disney+ […]
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What’s Up at the Movies: We Review “Minari”
I am not someone who pays more than cursory attention to the Golden Globes, but to address one of its many controversies before the ceremony tomorrow: Minari, regardless of the high volume of spoken Korean, is an American film. Its nomination in the Foreign Language category struck a nerve for many, and with good reason […]
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What’s Up at the Movies: We Review “Nomadland”
If you’re someone who follows the world of cinema, you’ve heard of Nomadland – this staple of best-of-2020 lists from Chloé Zhao became the first film to ever win the top prizes at both Venice and Toronto and has smashed the awards circuit so far. Yesterday, it finally became available for public viewing, releasing simultaneously […]