'Pearl': Film Review

The news of Robin Williams' 2014 death at his own hands was emotionally devastating. Not just because it was the tragic loss of a great talent, but also because it seemed unfathomable that such a brilliant entertainer, one who had brought so much joy to millions, could have felt such despair.

When the Japanese Imperial Army laid siege to an innocuous warehouse in 1937’s Battle of Shanghai, the skirmish ultimately became a flashpoint that galvanized a nation. China lost that battle but won the war, and the resistance of the Eight Hundred Heroes earned the legendary status it retains to this day.

Three years after the runaway success of Get Out, directors Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz have followed in Jordan Peele’s footsteps with another allegorical social thriller about the state of race relations in America. Much like the earlier film, Antebellum is a feature directorial debut that takes a big swing.

Also Read: Janelle Monae Horror Film 'Antebellum' Moves to On-Demand ReleaseFor the film’s lengthy opening stretch, Janelle Monáe plays a young slave named Eden in Louisiana during the Civil War (a time period that technically means the movie is post-antebellum, if you want to be picky).

any film is worth the risk inherent in venturing to a movie theater. I won’t presume to answer that question on anyone else’s behalf, but suffice to say that “New Mutants” isn’t exactly a groundbreaking cinematic experience.

Also Read: Why Armando Iannucci Didn't Go 'Mega-Futuristic' With New HBO Series 'Avenue 5'Just as Dickens’ original work was a blend of reality and fiction, Iannucci and co-writer Simon Blackwell play around with the idea of Copperfield the character as a writer who is himself writing his story as he goes along.

They saved the world by writing the perfect song, but it didn't take. (Maybe somebody actually listened to the song: "God gave rock & roll to you," really?) Imagining the return of the time-traveling Messrs.

Two male standouts from the riotous femme-forward Booksmart take another crack at high-school debauchery in Jeremy Garelick's The Binge, a Hulu teen comedy that seriously raises the stakes on the old "this one big party will make us legends!" routine: In a playful riff on the Purge movies, it imagines an America where there's only one night a year on which booze and drugs are even available —and they're legal for everyone above the age of 18.

smartest of heroes, of course, but they know what works for them: As Ted says at one point in this movie, “Maybe we should always not know what we’re doing!”But “Bill & Ted Face the Music” does know what it’s doing, which is to preserve the essence of the characters played by Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves even as it dumps a most unpleasant midlife crisis and an even more heinous threat to reality as we know on their still-shaggy heads.Written by original “Bill & Ted” creators Chris Matheson and

The risk with making a movie involving characters confined in a small space is that the audience can wind up feeling more claustrophobia than suspense. Such turns out to be the case with Brendan Walsh's directorial debut, about a couple trapped in a car during a blizzard.

For more than two decades now, Charlie Kaufman has been examining the tricky wiring of the human mind in an eclectic yet tightly cohesive body of screen work ranging across several lauded screenplays and three more he directed himself. His films are teasing puzzles marked by surreal detours and jarring rips in the fabric of reality.

Also Read: 'You Cannot Kill David Arquette' Documentary About Actor's Return to Wrestling in the WorksA documentary that sends up more red flags than a MAGA rally, “You Cannot Kill David Arquette” is nonetheless a robust (albeit bloody) piece of entertainment. And it’s also a character study of a guy who’s revealing himself to us regardless of whether what we’re seeing is reality or construction.The film, which opens digitally and on VOD on Aug.

The diagnosis is in, at least according to the estimable gallery of mental health professionals, and members of The Duty to Warn Coalition, who are seen in Dan Partland's documentary: President Donald Trump suffers from a condition known as malignant narcissism, the components of which are narcissism, paranoia, anti-social personality disorder and sadism.

If you’ve never seen a teen movie, a superhero movie, an asylum-set psychological thriller, Nightmare on Elm Street or a single episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, then perhaps The New Mutants will be something of an eye-opening experience.

Auli'i Cravalho, the voice of Disney's Moana and star of their live-TV version of The Little Mermaid, inches away from musicals in All Together Now, Brett Haley's film of a YA novel by Matthew Quick: Though her character's a teen singer who hopes to go pro, the pic gives more attention to her struggle to remain a local ray of sunshine despite being homeless.

In writer-director Sujata Day’s debut feature Definition Please, lead character Monica Chowdry is a college grad who still lives at home with her mother. A former national spelling bee champion, she now finds herself tutoring a new generation of spelling champion hopefuls in her hometown of Greensburg, Pennsylvania.

You'd think that by now Bruce Willis would be tired of saving the world. The veteran actor, who seems to have settled on making listless appearances in forgettable B-movie action movies as a retirement funding plan, co-stars in this would-be thriller, marking his third low-budget collaboration with director Matt Eskandari (the others being Survive the Night and Trauma Center) in two years.

Many documentaries have explored battles for gay liberation: There have been films about Stonewall, AIDS activism and the struggle for marriage equality. But Cured, which received its (virtual) premiere at this year’s Outfest, finds a fairly fresh slant that scintillates.

Who knew a zombie film could be so prescient? When Train to Busan surprised everyone in 2016 with its simultaneously fresh and familiar spin on the zombie apocalypse, it did so because co-writer and director Yeon Sang-ho splashed blood and guts all over characters we grew invested in, whose tragedies came like a punch to the gut and whose redemption felt earned.

“#Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump” is a frightening documentary that can leave you scared to death about the prospect of Donald Trump remaining in the Oval Office a day longer than is absolutely necessary. It’s a cautionary tale that can offer some degree of insight into the mind of our commander in chief.