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‘Hell of a Summer’ Review: Shallow Cuts

The ideal way to watch “The Luckiest Man in America,” a dramatization of a real-life game show incident, is to go in cold — to see these events unfold as TV viewers did. If you’ve never heard of Michael Larson, a contestant who appeared on CBS’s “Press Your Luck” in 1984, then it is best … Read more

‘Eric LaRue’ Review: When Pain Won’t Stay Quiet

Frankie, the roaming, cogitating mystery woman at the center of the cryptic drama “Gazer,” has eyes as big as hubcaps and a strange charisma. Much of her appeal stems from the striking looker who plays her, Ariella Mastroianni, who wrote the script with the director, Ryan J. Sloan. Although indebted to its influences to the … Read more

Two harrowing sexual assaults occur in the first 15 minutes of “Love Hotel,” a 1985 erotic drama from the cult director Shinji Somai. First, Tetsuro (Minori Terada), a flailing Tokyo businessman in debt to the yakuza, is forced to stand by while his wife, Ryoko (Kiriko Shimizu), is raped by a mob loan shark. Later, … Read more

In the self-absorbed action movie “The Martial Artist,” the director Shaz Khan stars as rising Pakistani American mixed martial arts fighter Ibby “The Prince” Bakran, an unconventional pugilist whose bouts are live streamed from remote locales like Death Valley in eastern California. Impressed by Ibby, the head of a mixed martial arts league (Gregory Sporleder) … Read more

Jay (Jonathan Groff) and Naveen (Karan Soni) experience their first meet-cute while worshiping at the same Hindu temple, united by their shared culture: Naveen is Indian, and Jay is white with adoptive Indian parents. Early on, the film “A Nice Indian Boy” hints at this swift romantic pace when Naveen’s mother, Megha (Zarna Garg, a … Read more

But still, the theatricality of a filibuster — amplified in an age when we can all watch it on whatever device is handy — gives the idiosyncratic maneuver some extra oomph. It’s a demonstration of something remarkable about the American system of government. In the film, the CBS newsman notes that among the observers in … Read more

Val Kilmer doesn’t even need to appear onscreen as Iceman in “Top Gun: Maverick” (2022) for the audience to feel his presence. Early on, Tom Cruise’s “Maverick” Mitchell is texting with his old rival, Iceman, but even though he’s just represented by words on a screen, you know exactly who that is, the joy of … Read more

Occasionally, amid the cycles of nostalgic clip-sharing that periodically occur online, you might happen upon the Berries and Cream video. The viral Starburst commercial, involving a briefcase-toting pilgrimesque lad, is a concise distillation of the particular brand of mid-to-late-aughts humor that dominated the early internet: quaintly absurd, silly, and above all, random. When, early on … Read more