Bilge Ebiri

The modernist Midwest: Haley Lu Richardson and John Cho.; Credit: Elisha Christian/Superlative Films and Depth of Field

The Lost Souls in Kogonada’s Columbus Find Glory in Indiana’s Architecture

In Columbus, architecture takes the place of emotions, to sometimes startling effect. An outwardly chilly, resolutely static film that nevertheless finds poignancy in the most surprising places, Kogonada’s directorial debut does a couple of important things so well that I can’t help but forgive the things it doesn’t. (Kogonada, by......
So it's come to this.; Credit: Sony

I Saw The Emoji Movie Twice and Learned a Lot From Poop

At 5 p.m. Thursday, I became one of the first people in this country to see The Emoji Movie a second time. (Aside, obviously, from the folks who made it — though I’m not entirely sure that some of them actually bothered to see it all the way through once.)......
Nolan's Dunkirk

Dunkirk Is the Movie Christopher Nolan Was Born to Make

The nerve-racking war thriller Dunkirk is the movie Christopher Nolan’s entire career has been building up to, in ways that even he may not have realized. He’s taken the British Expeditionary Force’s 1940 evacuation from France, early in World War II — a moment of heroism-in-defeat that has become an......
Andy Serkis is in there somewhere.; Credit: Twentieth Century Fox

War for the Planet of the Apes Is the Most Vital Blockbuster in Years

Somehow, while we were worrying about superheroes and star destroyers and hot rods and whether Captain America could beat up Superman or whatever, the goddamned Planet of the Apes movies became the most vital and resonant big-budget film series in the contemporary movie firmament. And they did it with the......
Ansel Elgort

Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver Makes the Car Chase Soar Again

Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver is a remorselessly entertaining, impeccably assembled action-musical in which cars and people defy the laws of physics and common sense. They leap into gunfire and hop over hoods and careen down streets in perfect time to the beats of an unimpeachably cool soundtrack. It’s all absurd,......