‘Pleasure’ Film Review: Feminist Workplace Parable Just Happens to Be Set in Porn

Setting out to be the Traffic of the opioid era, Nicholas Jarecki's Crisis presents a trilogy of storylines whose tendrils involve everyone from big-pharma execs to undercover cops to addicts at various stages of despair.

With presumed Western blockbusters such as Black Widow, No Time to Die, and The Eternals delayed until later this year, the rambunctious Detective Chinatown franchise has leaped into the void in a very, very big way. Few, if any movies have ever raked in so much coin in so little time.

In an uncanny instance of art mirroring life, two major Hollywood movies will premiere just weeks apart, both of which depict relentless campaigns by American government intelligence agencies to silence influential Black voices. They follow closely after an impeachment trial in which the majority of GOP senators showed their complicity in violence from white supremacist groups by voting to acquit the Instigator in Chief.

In Shatara Michelle Ford’s experimental thriller Test Pattern, light and dark are intertwined.The film is a staggeringly impressive debut, blending color, sound and story to create an intricate emotional tapestry. It begins in the moment before a sexual assault occurs.

One of pop culture's enduring questions is why an acclaimed, Academy Award-winning actor like Nicolas Cage would spend so much of his career squandering his talents in a succession of B-movies that can charitably be described as baroque.

When Molly, the troubled but dogged protagonist of Knocking, moves into her new apartment, she notices the word "Help" scrawled high on the elevator wall. Whether this is a random bit of graffiti or a sign of a particular hyperawareness on Molly's part — a sensitivity to cries of anguish — goes to the heart of this smart, disquieting film.

Watch Video: 'Barb & Star' Trailer: Watch Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo Awkwardly Flirt With Jamie DornanAfter the furniture store they work in shuts down, the women decide it’s time to shake things up, so they take a friend’s suggestion and travel to Vista Del Mar, a Florida island that’s a vacation paradise for travelers over the age of 45.What they don’t realize is that a mad scientist (also Wiig) plans to get her revenge on the town by unleashing a swarm of killer mosquitos during the annual

I love seeing Lara Jean Covey in pain. Then again, you probably do, too.

A young woman arrives from a distant land in the capital of a certain entertainment industry and ascends the ladder of success, only to lose a bit of her soul on each rung of the climb. That, of course, is the plot of Showgirls, but it's not like Paul Verhoeven, or anyone who's written a version of Faust, ever patented the concept.

You don't find subjects much more disarming than Rita Moreno, whose seven-decade career on stage and screen is described in Mariem Pérez Riera's celebratory documentary as both the essence of the American Dream and the tenacious attainment of it despite dispiriting obstacles. "You must never really believe anything about your fame and all that kind of bullshit," says Moreno with characteristic unfiltered charm.

Also Read: 14 Buzziest Sundance Movies for Sale in 2021, From Questlove's 'Summer of Soul' to Rebecca Hall's 'Passing' (Photos)The story is specific to one group of women at one particular time, but five decades later, it’s certainly applicable to current questions about the role of religion in society, about the place of tradition and rigor in the Church and about how social justice movements intersect with biblical teachings.

Also Read: 'One Day at a Time' Star Rita Moreno on the 'Odd Resistance' to Latinx Representation on TVNonetheless, Pérez Riera smartly tames the endearing adulation and expounds the reach of the project, with honest conversations on gender violence and ethnic discrimination as they relate to Moreno’s experiences.

Steeped in the gory look, grimy feel and transgressive spirit of the so-called "video nasties" from the 1980s, British meta-minded horror movie Censor offers an admirable pastiche, spiked with black humor.

Also Read: 14 Buzziest Sundance Movies for Sale in 2021, From Questlove's 'Summer of Soul' to Rebecca Hall's 'Passing' (Photos)The film was one of the opening-night presentations at the virtual Sundance Film Festival on Thursday, occupying the same position as previous music-focused docs like “Twenty Feet From Stardom,” “Searching for Sugar Man,” “What Happened, Miss Simone?” and last year’s “Miss Americana.” No doubt it left some viewers wishing that it had been the Eccles Theatre moving to the

Kourosh Ahari's debut feature proves an accomplished psychological chiller that impresses far beyond its historic status as a U.S. production featuring primarily Iranian or Iranian-American talent.

The psychological toll of investigative police work seeps into the bones of John Lee Hancock's gritty neo-noir The Little Things, which captures Los Angeles County's flat urban sprawl and snaking freeways to highly atmospheric effect.

Watch Video: Denzel Washington and Rami Malek Are Out to Catch Jared Leto in 'The Little Things' TrailerOne senses that Hancock (“Saving Mr. Banks,” “The Founder”) wants to bait and switch the audience with what at first seems like a straightforward policier but then pivots into a character study of Deke and Jim — respectively, an aging lawman who’s literally haunted by his mistakes and an ambitious young climber who may follow in Deke’s footsteps for better or for worse.

Just a few months ago, Juno Temple helped give the fledgling Apple TV+ service its first must-see: Ted Lasso, a practically perfect comedy series that radiated decency and hope in a world that...well, you were there. She’s very much on the other side of the coin in her reunion with the streaming service, playing a drug-addicted single mom so neglectful that abandoning her kid to the care of a just-released felon is actually a step in the right direction.

After all the passion and grievances stirred up in Malcolm & Marie, it's a tad on the nose to hear Cee-Lo on the Outkast track "Liberation" sing about the "fine line between love and hate." But it's glorious to watch Zendaya, in a commanding turn that cements her arrival as a grownup movie star, skate along that line with both raw emotionality and the jaded remove of a perceptive woman toughened by experience.

Watch Video: 'Malcolm & Marie' Trailer: Zendaya and John David Washington Have Steamy, Love-Hate RelationshipMarie’s opening salvo is that Malcolm forgot to thank her during his lengthy curtain speech, but that minor betrayal exposes a myriad of fault lines in their relationship, from his ego to her low self-esteem, not to mention the fact that she feels that Malcolm has raided her own past issues with drug addiction and rehab to create the female lead of his film, who’s having issues with drug