On the popular movie-centric social media site Letterboxd, you can filter movies by type. Horror, comedy, drama, and documentary can be neatly separated. But listing documentary as its own, singular genre is a categorical mistake. It means the Holocaust documentary Shoah somehow belongs in the same bucket as The King of Kong, which follows nerds […]

Unless you subscribe to Kane Parsons’ YouTube channel, anticipation for Backrooms might be baffling. Over the past few years, Parsons has uploaded a series of videos from inside an imagined liminal space that defies any sort of architectural sense but vaguely resembles an abandoned shopping mall. The videos are filmed in a way that suggests […]

Rapper-turned-filmmaker Boots Riley plays the long game. His new surreal sci-fi comedy, I Love Boosters, borrows its title from a track on his band the Coup’s 20-year-old near-masterpiece Pick a Bigger Weapon. The song is an irresistible ode to professional shoplifters who resell their stolen goods at egalitarian prices, a practice Riley defends in the […]

Something strange happens in the opening moments of Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu: The names of the cast members appear on the screen. Standard practice for most movies, but a Star Wars first. Creator George Lucas paid a quarter-million-dollar fine to the Directors Guild of America for his refusal to put the credits at […]

Can you name more than a couple of movies you’re excited to see in 2026? Nope. Now consider the theatrical releases of 1996: Sling Blade, Jerry Maguire, Scream, Broken Arrow, Happy Gilmore, Bottle Rocket, The Craft, Mission: Impossible, The Rock, Independence Day, Trainspotting, Tin Cup, Swingers, Space Jam—and that’s only a partial list that doesn’t […]

Ginkgo trees undergo a beautiful autumn transformation. Where most leaves become red and brown before falling to the ground, ginkgos transition into a vibrant yellow that commands attention. Colloquially called “living fossils,” their size and advanced age adds to their majesty. Ildikó Enyedi, the writer and director of the alluring new drama Silent Friend, takes […]

Growing up as a young actor in Baltimore, Lucas Iverson would visit D.C. with his mom for the local theaters. Among them all, Shakespeare Theatre Company always stood out to him. So perhaps it was kismet that, more than a decade later, he found himself on that stage last spring making his D.C. debut as […]

A hyphen, then a colon, and finally, parenthesis. That’s a lot of punctuation for a concert movie documenting a Gen Z pop star. Her fan base may have largely abandoned punctuation, but Billie Eilish — Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D) has not. The most consecrated concert films reflect a harmony […]

Blue Heron is a quiet movie. No big-name stars lend it drawing power, and it found a home with a boutique distributor primarily known for historical preservation. On camera, nothing too dramatic happens, and its sensibility is markedly delicate. It’s only playing at a handful of theaters across the country, with a modest promotional campaign […]

Adam Scott is known for prickly, unlikable characters. You see those qualities in the popular TV series Severance, or comedies like Step Brothers. But despite his resistance to charisma and charm, he brings something human and recognizable to the roles he plays—often a snobby riff on the everyman, someone who harbors the delusion that his […]

Twenty years ain’t what it used to be. The Devil Wears Prada opened in the summer of 2006 opposite Superman Returns, a sequel to films made more than 20 years earlier that ignored the events of a couple of more recent follow-ups. A buoyant workplace comedy about a principled young journalist who learns not to […]

“This is not a ghost story,” reads one of the posters for Mother Mary, the equal-parts thrilling and frustrating new feature from A Ghost Story writer-director David Lowery. And indeed, I don’t think anything actually supernatural occurs in this psychodrama of reconciliation between a scandal-damaged pop star and her spurned dressmaker. Like Black Swan and […]

Normal, Minnesota, the flat, snowed-in setting for the new Bob Odenkirk-headlined action flick Normal, is fictional. How quickly the phrase “Odenkirk-headlined action flick” has become normalized, as though the world is full of 63-year-old former Saturday Night Live writers-cum-Tony Award nominees who live totally reasonable, temperate lives until the need arises for them to take […]

Michaela Coel and Ian McKellen are exceptionally well-cast in The Christophers, the witty and complex new drama from director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter Ed Solomon. Everything about Coel’s Lori and McKellen’s Julian is a contrast, from their ages to how they communicate. Though traveling a well-trod trope—over the course of the film, Lori and Julian […]

The United States of America did not, to the best of my knowledge, commit any civilization-erasing war crimes against Iran or other adversaries during the 104 minutes I spent watching the new rom-com You, Me & Tuscany on Tuesday evening. The movie was half-over when the deadline our president had given the Iranian regime to […]

When director Alan J. Pakula’s adaptation of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s bestselling 1974 nonfiction book All the President’s Men hit theaters on April 9, 1976, it didn’t matter that much of the U.S. had already been stirred by the Washington Post’s shocking reporting on the Watergate scandal. Seeing the exacting efforts by two young […]

Confession: I became a marijuana user later in life, but I’ve always appreciated stoner comedies (and it’s usually comedies; aside from Pineapple Express, there are few pot equivalents to Scarface). From Cheech & Chong to Harold & Kumar, much like an indica-dominant gummy, green humor always works for me. To that end, I’ve gathered some […]

Can you ever really know the person you’re about to marry? It does not matter whether it has been two years or 20, there are always hidden depths to your partner that you may never fully realize. Most of the time, this is the stuff of romance: Marriage requires faith in yourself and your spouse, […]

Maybe it was inevitable that Julia Ducournau would stumble with her third feature. The French filmmaker’s previous film, 2021’s car-centric body horror Titane, which won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, set the expectations bar high. As a storyteller (beginning with her 2016 coming-of-age cannibal horror debut, Raw), Ducournau creates intense, borderline uncomfortable […]

New African Film Festival at AFI Silver through March 26 Throughout the year, AFI Silver puts on numerous film festivals that punch above the cinema’s weight. The Capital Irish Film Festival, which wrapped on March 1, is one such example, and the area’s most continuously exciting film festival is the AFI EU Showcase, which happens […]

I think it was the great philosopher Taylor Swift who said shake, shake, shake it off. And when spring officially arrives in D.C. this week, that’s exactly what I suggest you do with the winter blues. Spring brings the promises of newness, fresh growth, and—if you want to get real woo-woo—rebirth. (But seriously, when that […]

There was a moment when Steven Spielberg was going to direct the film that became Christopher Nolan’s cosmic odyssey Interstellar. That 2014 landmark was about a hypercompetent, effortlessly cool dude who blasts off on a multiyear space voyage to save humankind from extinction, with a little help from a wisecracking nonhuman sidekick. It’s the weepiest […]

Citizen Kane had topped the British Film Institute’s decadalSight and Sound poll of the greatest films of all time for half a century, but in 2012, the earth moved. Vertigo, the purest, most entrancing expression of director Alfred Hitchcock’s obsessive and controlling worldview, moved up to the No. 1 spot, some 54 years after its […]

It’s been silent for almost two years, but the Yellowstone TV universe is dropping two new titles this month: Marshals and The Madison. Co-creator and showrunner Taylor Sheridan’s newest hit, Landman (set in Texas and unrelated to Yellowstone), stole the hype during Yellowstone’s downtime, but Kevin Costner walked so Billy Bob Thornton could, well, not […]

The 2026 Capital Irish Film Festival presented by Solas Nua at AFI Silver Theatre has more crowd-pleasers than usual for its 20th year, which includes 18 features and several shorts programs. From Feb. 26 through March 1, the D.C.-based organization dedicated to promoting contemporary Irish arts, screens sports dramas, coming-of-age romances, and a heist thriller. […]

How to Make a Killing, an old-timey star vehicle for forever-campaigning old-timey star Glen Powell, opens with its leading man on death row. A prison chaplain (Adrian Lukis) has come to comfort him in the hours prior to his execution. Persuaded by the padre’s assertion that this is almost certainly the condemned man’s last chance […]

Late last year, Theater Alliance announced that it would be making a permanent home at 340 Maple Dr. SW. For those of us that regularly attend its seasonal programming, the news wasn’t unexpected. Since it first moved from Anacostia to Southwest D.C. in 2024, Theater Alliance has ensconced itself in the neighborhood’s existing arts community, […]

Despite being set centuries apart, two new releases this week have more common ground than you may think. Both feature a tall, chiseled, improbably handsome man indulging his idea of unconventional romance and eroticism—a luxury that causes both men’s relationships to develop in volatile, borderline toxic ways. While the latest sexually charged “Wuthering Heights” adaptation […]

Emerald Fennell said it herself: “It’s Wuthering Heights, and it isn’t.” That’s the best way to approach Fennell’s third feature film, by far the horniest (and maybe hottest) take on Emily Brontë’s seminal 1847 gothic novel. The film “Wuthering Heights” (yes, the quotes are part of the name) largely follows Brontë’s storyline: Catherine’s drunken single […]