I've reviewed films for more than 35 years. Current movie reviews of new theatrical releases and streaming films are added weekly to the Silver Screen Capture movie news site. Many capsule critiques originally appeared in expanded form in my syndicated Lights Camera Reaction column.
Emerald Fennell’s stylized retelling of Wuthering Heights (A-) paints with all the colors of her whim: statuesque leads involved in constant craving, outrageous bodice ripping romance, can’t-look-away couture costumes, an ultra-glam soundscape, twisted minor characters, luminous colors melting off the edges of the screen, a bodily fluid or two too many and very little fidelity to convention. The sum of the iconoclastic director’s fever dream of parts is often a hypnotic hoot and even more so a tantalizing tone poem on the nature of longing. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi are absolute delights as childhood companions whose off-kilter dynamics have evolved into a tainted lovelorn mess. Their chemistry is a palpable cavalcade of mood and madness, played out with a paper doll palette of blissed-out bravura. The duo’s adventures from the peaks of fog-coated mountainside trysts to the valleys of vigorous palace intrigue make for a full-fledged extravaganza of love and vengeance; and while the film is overlong at times and likely a bit appalling to Brontë scholars, it is nonetheless sexy and funny as hell. The maximalist magic shell covering the bones of this literary classic (or rather about half of it), doesn’t sugarcoat or cloak the subtleties or satire of class structure themes. It tells its own tale and blazes its own trail, keeping the story timeless and contemporary. Linus Sandgren’s evocative cinematography lends the story surprises around each bend, and the music by Anthony Willis punctuated by Charli XCX bops underscores the film’s pop sensibilities with reckless rhythm. Jacqueline Durran’s costumes are shimmering and sublime, casting stunning silhouettes across Caroline Barclay’s creative off-kilter production design captured on 35mm VistaVision film. Among the pulpy players are Hong Chau as a cunning killjoy and Alison Oliver as a daffy comic foil. I’m not sure what Shazad Latif was going for exactly in a thankless role. Fennell’s film is magic and tragic, giddy and gothic, electric and eclectic and should fit the bill for those seeking a sumptuous cinematic bonbon with an independent sensibility in time for Valentine’s Day weekend.
Viewed as part of Virtual Sundance Film Festival 2026
In Giselle Bonilla’s The Musical (C-), Will Brill plays a frustrated playwright and middle school teacher who hatches the perfect plan to exact revenge on Rob Lowe’s character, the principal who has wronged him. The game plan seems foolproof: ruin the school’s chances of winning the prestigious Blue Ribbon of Academic Excellence by staging an inappropriate and chaotic school play. At the film’s center, Brill doesn’t register with the comic timing nor the screenplay words to properly propel the dark comedy. There’s some fun with occasional outrageous jokes at the expense of woke culture, and the kid ensemble is roundly enjoyable. Bonilla maintains consistent gallows humor, but the enterprise just doesn’t get much lift. Anyone who has viewed the 2016 TV series Vice Principals or the 1999 movie Election has already seen a much better interpretation on similar themes. By the time the showdown goes on in the final act, there’s not much more to say or sing.
Viewed as part of Virtual Sundance Film Festival 2026
Based on her spirited original screenplay, comedienne Iliza Shlesinger stars as a global humanitarian licking her own wounds after losing both her job and her love interest in Josephine Decker’s joyful dramedy Chasing Summer (B). When her character retreats to her Texas hometown, she experiences a kind of Millennial coming-of-age that starts screwball and evolves to sentimental. There are good ensemble performances by Cassidy Freeman and Megan Mullally as family members, Lola Tung as a new friend and Tom Welling as a high school sweetheart, but it’s Garrett Wareing who rises to the top as a handsome and confident new younger boyfriend, providing our protagonist with a memorable age gap relationship which could either be a summer fling or much more. Shlesinger is largely a hoot as her fish out of water maneuvers a summer job at the skating rink including extracurricular keggers. The actress demonstrates considerable sass and spunk; and as screenwriter she gives herself some pretty fun situations and scenery to chew. It’s not the most original film (it’s telling it’s not even the only Sundance movie this year about the insights one learns on a return to one’s hometown: see – or rather don’t – Carousel). The romantic plot is electric, and our leading lady is funny opposite the more traditional Lone Star State women as she flexes her character arc. It’s well filmed and entertaining thanks to Decker, and a screen star is born in Shlesinger.
Viewed as part of Virtual Sundance Film Festival 2026
The grand tradition of a couple finding love against the backdrop of history continues in the nearly decade and a half chronicled in a new Sundance Film Festival premiere documentary. Birds of War (B+), co-directed by its subjects Abd Alkater and Janay Boulos, follows their love and war story. He’s a Syrian activist and cameraman, and she’s a London-based Lebanese BBC journalist. The story traces a pivotal 13 years of their personal archives spanning revolutions, war and exile. With international journalists banned from front-line coverage during the Syrian civil war, international news stations were reliant on activists on the ground to provide footage of the conflict. Exchanging text and voice messages between their respective cities of London and Aleppo, Boulos tasks Habak to clandestinely capture editorially approved stories and segments for her viewers. Gradually, theirs shifts beyond a working relationship, and the film deftly balances the gravity of the grim stories they cover with the flourish and delight of young people in love. The documentary traces the duo’s parallel lives and burgeoning love affair as Boulos loses her faith in journalism and Habak faces the inevitable fall of Aleppo. As both Syria and Boulos’ homeland of Lebanon undergo dramatic developments, the couple reflects on the sacrifices made because of politics and war, but also on the insights they’ve gained along the way. The film is powerful and emotional and a standout of the 2026 Sundance slate.
Viewed as part of Virtual Sundance Film Festival 2026
Mohammed Ali Naqvi’s documentary Hanging by a Wire (B) showcases valiant rescue efforts to save eight schoolchildren trapped mid-wire nearly 1,000 feet over a ravine in a daily use cable car in a remote part of the Himalayan foothills. With ten hours until the transport’s snapped wire is expected to drop the cabin of kids to the ground, viewers witness an array of techniques being employed to try to avert disaster. The film’s director orchestrates reenactments and captures fascinating interviews with locals and lieutenants juxtaposed with crystal-clear drone footage of the race against time. It’s a lean and exciting, if not particularly surprising, entry into real-life sagas of heroism. Some sophisticated techniques to save the stranded are no match for the ingenuity of some unexpected problem solvers. It’s clear why international attention turned to this North Pakistan tale, and this doc fills in many of the details with skill and finesse that will suspend disbelief.
Viewed as part of Virtual Sundance Film Festival 2026
Despite clearly positive intentions, Rachel Lambert’s domestic drama Carousel (C) is a whole lot of the same. It’s nice to see Chris Pine in a dramatic role: here he portrays a sad dad coping with changes in the physician clinic where he works, with an anxious daughter (Abby Ryder Fortson) and a childhood love interest (Jenny Slate) re-emerging in his life. The plot just doesn’t spark and the dialogue doesn’t crackle as the film quietly observes the machinations of domestic life. Most confounding, the chemistry between Pine and Slate doesn’t manifest with much natural energy, and it’s unconvincing these lifelong connections had a palatable past relationship. Still, despite the inertia of this particular movie, Chris Pine’s presence in it should remind casting directors we want to see more of him challenging himself in future juicy roles.
Viewed as part of Virtual Sundance Film Festival 2026
Talk about men with a mission! J.M. Harper’s Soul Patrol (B+) is a moving documentary about a valiant recon team in Vietnam comprised of Black soldiers reuniting a half century later. It is enlightening and therapeutic for all involved, including this elite team’s wives endeavoring to pierce the veneer of bygone and often troubling memories. It is all the more poignant leveraging Super 8 camera footage captured by the Company F, 51st Infantry soldiers in action, many of them teenage innocents abroad facing adversity and experiencing a singular solidarity bonding them forever. The flashbacks are effective and in some cases quite tense as viewers learn the origins of the men and the challenges they faced on a variety of battlefields. Harper chronicles an abundance of history with craft and cunning, collapsing the past and modern day subjectively and with mastery. By the time the Blind Boys of Alabama’s “I Shall Not Walk Alone” plays as the heroes appear in modern day in the aisle of a Piggly Wiggly grocery store, it’s truly a stand up and cheer event.
Viewed as part of Virtual Sundance Film Festival 2026
There’s never an optimal time to make tough decisions affecting one’s personal destiny, and for the female protagonist in the Lithuanian film How to Divorce During the War (B+) directed by Andrius Blaževičius, separating from her partner on the eve before the Russian invasion of Ukraine is just the beginning. Žygimantė Elena Jakštaitė stars as steely corporate breadwinner Marija opposite Marius Repšys as faux-hipster homemaker husband Vytas, and the crumbling couple shares a precocious pre-teen daughter Dovilė, convincingly played by Amelija Adomaitytė. Set in Vilnius in 2022 in the Baltic state adjacent to a simmering war territory, the characters occupy a clinical and sometimes lightly satirical world as they maneuver through complacency about shifts to the status quo and soul search to be properly performative about life in flux on both domestic and geopolitical fronts. Jakštaitė is particularly effective, from an iconic early sequence told almost entirely through a windshield to her fluid interactions with corporate colleagues, refugees and even her own rebellious offspring. The elegant, classical composition of sequences by cinematographer Narvydas Naujalis against unsettling and insistent music by Jakub Rataj places the players in this ensemble as fascinating pawns in a zone of interest. Examining both the propaganda and realities of politics and war in their extended families tightens the psychological lens. From home life and corporate settings to the art scene and schoolyards where protests large and small start conjuring, a meditation on messiness plays out in interesting ways, even though the film feels like a pilot episode of an even more interesting plot to come. While those next milestones don’t fully manifest within the boundaries of this movie, its makers provoke a deep sense of introspection and conversation about identity in an interconnected world.
Let these lyrics wash over you as the latest examination of office toxicity plays out in a modern milieu: “They just use your mind and they never give you credit / It’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it.” Sam Raimi’s buoyant horror/comedy Send Help (A-) functions as both a delirious deserted island escapade and also a twisted battle of the sexes, with pulp friction aplenty to scratch the itch, feed the beast and satisfy the gods of carnage attuned to his particular directorial sensibilities. Rachel McAdams brilliantly creates a singular character: an undervalued cubicle denizen with mad coping skills who finds herself on shipwrecked shores with a boss most boorish, played with a dashing grimace by the ever-more-fascinating Dylan O’Brien. This deeply entertaining two-hander traces the peculiar power dynamics of two incredibly committed actors, all the while steeped in the tropes of a survival story. This adventurous allegory offers continuous fresh takes and mixed genres, with plentiful splashes of giddiness and gore. Bill Pope’s crystalline cinematography and Danny Elfman’s understated score add zest to the demented dynamics. It’s watercolor meets watercooler as corporate culture get an epic seaside skewering.
Lee Byung-hun lends a delicious lead performance of dark desperation as a father and gardener who finds himself on the outs in a career crossroads in Park Chan-wook’s sneaky satire No Other Choice (B+). The antihero at the film’s center sets violent targets on his competitors for a coveted job, and the movie keeps upping the ante with zany episodes. As his spouse, Son Ye-jin is the film’s unsung MVP, lending diabolical support to the story’s central conflicts. Chan-wook’s mastery of tone, pace and picturesque cinematic frames help carry a very dark premise over the finish line. Expect nothing short of relentless.
Anyone with kids will understand how stubborn they can be to get what they want. Shai Carmeli-Pollak’s The Sea (B+) explores the very fraught geopolitical complexities in Israel through the eyes of a tween Palestinian boy named Khaled who just wants to wade in the waters of the Mediterranean while he’s young. Unfortunately the beach is out of his reach as he’s singled out on a field trip and denied entry at a checkpoint, so he sneaks into Israel, sparking a journey for freedom and a desperate search by his father. Young actor Muhammad Gazawi is magnificent as the 12-year-old at the film’s center, and his mature, emotive abilities keep audiences locked in on his unlikely plight, in the style of a Hope and Glory or Empire of the Sun. Khalifa Natour plays his father Ribhi, an undocumented laborer working in Israel, and his quest to reunite with his runaway son adds poignant layers to the story. The film was Israel’s submission for the 98th Academy Awards. It is noted for its portrayal of Israeli occupation, drawing both acclaim and controversy within Israel for its depiction of soldiers and policies at large. Carmeli-Pollak keeps the journey moving, even though its plot and pace meanders in the middle. All in all, it’s a movie of both ideas and action, a tender tale with tense underpinnings . The child’s viewpoint on justice and the nature of borders will surely spark conversation.
Here are the dates to book an in-person viewing of this landmark film at the 2026 Atlanta Jewish Film Festival:
Jodie Foster plays an idiosyncratic American psychiatrist in Paris and flexes her remarkable language skills in Rebecca Zlotowski’s largely unremarkable dramatic thriller A Private Life (C). While the protagonist’s tightly knit world begins to unravel after the sudden death of a patient, the viewer can’t help but contemplate the lead actress in full French-speaking mode attempting to also emote within the confines of a fairly flimsy and meandering mystery. Her character is seen alternately puffing cigs, gulping wine or muttering “merde” while en route to each subsequent scene. Zlotowski doesn’t give Foster much to work with in terms of story, ensemble or even relics of modernity. For every reference to long Covid grounding the tale in modern times, there are countless conversations about missing cassettes and a tense trip to the card catalogue. The drab cinematography and dreary atmosphere fail to give the film the pick-me-up that might have helped hasten the pace. I kept waiting for my seventh grade French class teacher to invite us all to a “surprise-partie.” There’s one sequence of hypnosis that almost takes viewers to an alternate otherworld, but the film largely remains steeped in potboiler tropes without that veritable pot ever boiling. One sexy subplot goes absolutely nowhere; another goes further than one would wish. Thankfully there are a few anticipated moments of joie de vivre in the final act.
