FIRST Watch
Spoiler-Free Reviews
Locked
David Yarokvesky’s “Locked” is a solid showcase for the underrated range of Bill Skarsgård, who can slide from a moody creature like his character in “Nosferatu” to a panicked, one-man show like this one with ease. And that’s about it. As good as Skarsgård is here, he gets stuck in a movie that has no idea…
Being Maria
In “Being Maria,” teenage Maria Schneider (Anamaria Vartolomei) is first seen sitting on a movie set, watching her actor father, Daniel Gélin (Yvon Attal), at work, her face lit up with pride and curiosity. At home, her mother (Marie Gillain) gives her a hard time for wanting a relationship with the man who abandoned them….
The Alto Knights
It’s 1957, and mobster Frank Costello (Robert De Niro) exits out of a yellow cab and struts into a New York City highrise. As he waits for an elevator, his sleek grey suit and matching fedora catch one’s eye against the walnut interior of this building’s refined lobby. A canted angle of Castello’s reflection in…
Magazine Dreams
“Magazine Dreams” is a dark drama in the vein of “Taxi Driver,” Martin Scorsese’s film about a disturbed cabbie named Travis Bickle who projects his damage onto the world. There have been a lot of movies in that mode, starting with 1970’s “Joe” (about a couple of reactionaries who hate hippies enough to murder them)…
Revelations
I admittedly had high hopes for Yeon Sang-ho’s “Revelations.” For one, “Train to Busan” and its sequel “Peninsula” are hell-raising zombie flicks that managed to put a new, adrenalized twist on the genre. Secondly, Alfonso Cuarón, the man behind “Roma” and “Children of Men,” is a producer here. But as I settled in and watched…