Bilge Ebiri

Over the years, Tom Cruise has been many things, but he’s almost never been marginalized — not in one of his own movies. Oh, he’s played supporting parts and done cameos here and there, but even in those smaller roles (in films like Tropic Thunder or Rock of Ages), he......

The 2017 Cannes Film Festival wrapped up last Sunday with a slate of generally predictable (and perfectly worthwhile) awards. And while it may have been a somewhat lackluster year for the festival’s main competition, there were plenty of cinematic treasures to be found on the Croisette – even a couple......

Newly restored, James Ivory’s elegant and passionate 1987 film, Maurice, adapted from the posthumously published novel by E.M. Forster, is being rereleased. Last year, I had the chance to discuss this film and some of Ivory’s other works with the director. Here is some of our conversation. I remember the......

Imagine a remake of Cape Fear shot like Kubrick’s The Shining, with Max Cady recast as a child, and you’ll have some idea of the strangeness of Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer. The film has quickly proved to be one of the most divisive titles at this......

Solid rule of thumb: Never accept strawberries from strangers on the street, no matter how good-looking the fruit or well-spoken the unknown person....

What is Okja, exactly? A children’s movie? An action flick? A subtle political allegory? A flamboyant, dystopian satire? A vegetarian manifesto?...

With his bow-legged power-walk, low-boil narcissism and tough-guy snarl, Brad Pitt is the comic ghost in David Michod’s all-too-real War Machine. The film, which is premiering on Netflix this week (and also getting an extremely limited theatrical release), was inspired by the late Michael Hastings’s book The Operators: The Wild......

It might be surprising to realize that David Lynch has only ever made one period piece: The Elephant Man (1980), set in the Victorian era. The rest of the director’s films, save for his 1984 sci-fi disaster Dune, take place in what presumably is the here and now. Or, more......