Movie reviews of Matt Weiner

Even the classics that have been analyzed to death show off new themes. Review

Baker’s most memorable characters are often wrestling with the American dream, and Baker himself seems like a Rorschach test for your own baggage: both pointed critic and secret optimist. Review

Rodriguez, Colón-Zayas and Rubin-Vega all invest so much in these women, and it’s a credit to their performances that we can fill in so much of their lives when the story itself doesn’t seem to want to spend any more time with them than is necessary for exposition. It’s not that the time spent at Allswell is unpleasant. But it does leave you wishing you could’ve ordered just a little bit more. Review

There’s the fully earned chemistry between Amy and Loren. Even as the story relies on some emotional shortcuts to save time on character development, the two are fully realized by Restrepo and DeBlasis. Review

Breillat’s unsettling study of Anne and her motivations is ultimately an artistic one—and all the wallowing in moral uncertainty that goes along with that. Review

It’s not the worst outing for a feature debut, but Baron should go beyond the sum of his influences if he hopes to equal them in profundity. Review

Sy doesn’t offer clear answers. Only stellar performances that welcome the inscrutable, even haunting contradictions of love and life. Review

Jude’s story is unabashedly political, and ruthless in its portrayal of the inhumanity of neoliberal austerity. But the script, propelled by Manolache’s indefatigable portrayal of Angela, is also laugh out loud funny. Review

The movie also moves at a rapid pace, almost to a fault. It’s a sparse plot, which puts the full weight of the challenging emotional interplay on MacKay and Stewart-Jarrett. The two leads are both exceptional, and pull off their thorny affair with empathy on both sides. Review

Riddle of Fire rises above other nostalgic retreads in the way it commits to the mystery and unease of the world Razooli creates for a remarkably assured feature debut. The film captures the spirit of adventure for weird kids in a grown-up world. And how sometimes it’s worth risking everything to play a cool video game. Review

Within this narrow setting, Tran’s light touch and genial script centers the story on Eugénie and Dodin’s love and respect for one another, and how the two intersect personally and professionally. Review

While The Monk and the Gun is mostly bucolic satire, it’s a credit to writer/director Dorji that the ominous unease surrounding the ceremony persists up until the very end. Review

The result is a mesmerizing sports movie with more echoes of Malick than Aronofksy. Call it a curse or call it bad luck, but Durkin’s deft handling of these events turns public tragedy into a searing meditation on familial bonds and the limits of a certain type of masculinity. Review

The sea might be a cruel mistress, but in Xiaopeng’s coming of age tale it’s nothing compared to the pain of embracing life and growing up in the face of hardship. Review

Saturn Bowling is also sumptuously filmed, with the bowling alley’s seedy nighttime scenes bathed in deep blacks, reds and blues. And the daytime offers little respite. As befits this neo-noir, there are no heroes to be found. Review

The enthralling mystery at the heart of Mister Organ instead is the way Farrier so thoroughly establishes that there is nothing there to Organ—he calls him a “black hole” at one point—while being unable to stop himself from getting caught up in the man’s grievances. Review

8 Found Dead dances around some of the obvious questions that films like Barbarian and Funny Games address head on. But it also gets points for homaging the greatest lodging horror film of all time. Review

Our Father, the Devil throws up a lot of weighty questions around forgiveness and salvation. The film is less concerned with answering those questions, but then that’s also the point. Review

It’s all thrown together too haphazardly, and with little room left for Mob Land to have something to say of its own that we haven’t already heard before. Review

It’s a confrontation that seems equally likely to end in catharsis or carnage. Alegria ratchets up the tension, as well as the environmental devastation, until the metaphorical dam breaks for Cecilia. Review

Speculative documentary, narrative fiction… why not add hopeful dystopia to the genre list? Review

Ozon allows longstanding tensions to simmer slowly alongside familial bonds. And even if the pot never boils over, this more detached approach ends up being all the more cathartic in the end. Review

Shinkai excels at balancing personal drama with major, world-altering stakes. Suzume feels in the same vein as his recent blockbuster successes, such as 2019’s Weathering with You and the smash hit Your Name. But Suzume also shows the difference between formula and formulaic. Review

Champions does itself no favors by substituting coarseness for meanness. That’s preferable to what this movie might have looked like a few decades ago, but it manages to neuter the comic touch of Farrelly and writer Mark Rizzo while dulling any interesting edges at the same time. Review