There’s a miniseries running on FX and Hulu based on a book by the great documentary filmmaker Errol Morris. It’s called "A Wilderness of Error" and concerns the bizarre case of Jeffrey MacDonald, who was convicted in 1979 of killing his family nine years earlier. The case was a media sensation at the time, though it’s faded enough that I didn’t know anything about it. But Errol Morris being Errol Morris, I knew if he was involved in taking another look at it, then the whole thing was very, very

According to Guinness World Records, the literary character who’s been portrayed the most in film and TV—by far—is Sherlock Holmes. Well, I should say the human character, as Dracula actually has Holmes beat. But ol’ Sherlock has been portrayed more than 250 times by more than 75 actors, and those numbers are from eight years ago when Guinness made the pronouncement.

I’ll be up front about this: If you’re someone who just watches movies for entertainment, that’s perfectly reasonable, but the new movie The Swerve isn’t for you. If you’re someone who’s willing to get very uncomfortable while looking at raw human experience, this is an absolute haymaker of a film. For me, movies—like all art—aren’t always about having a good time.

One of the very few things that’s actually been pretty good about our current state is that the ability to watch new movies has become more democratic. Of course, I’m of the opinion that all movies are better on a big screen, so I’m definitely not saying what we’ve got right now is better, but because high profile film festivals have had to get creative, some of them have made their movies accessible to people everywhere.

Americans are most likely to know Scottish director and writer Armando Iannucci as the creator of the HBO show ‘Veep,’ which was very good, but nothing compared to the work he did on his BBC series ‘The Thick of It’ and the related film In the Loop . Those latter two are astonishingly profane and overwhelmingly funny—while you’re laughing at one joke you’re likely to miss three more, the words come so hard and fast. All of this work, and his 2017 film The Death of Stalin , deal with powerful

The first time I watched Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things , I lost myself for a little while. Everything was a vague haze, what I call “me” became blurry, the words I said seemed… if not meaningless, then at least useless. The movie was a prolonged assault, it attacked me from the inside, I left exhausted.

I was 10 years old when Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure came out, so, naturally, I loved it. But nostalgia is blinding, and when I heard about Bill & Ted Face the Music , the first time we’ve seen these characters in 30 years, I just hoped they wouldn’t screw anything up, knowing that I’d like it to some degree just because it’s Bill and Ted. I didn’t expect to like it this much.

Early in Michael Almereyda’s biopic Tesla , the two great inventors Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison are having a conversation, have a disagreement, and smush ice cream cones on each other.

Considering recent events, I’ve been heartened to see 90% of the country agrees the post office is a very good thing. What it’s not, though, is particularly exciting . And so it’s not surprising there aren’t a ton of movies about postal workers. But one of the sweetest movies you’ll ever see is about exactly that—1994’s Il Postino .

I mentioned a few weeks ago that the way we have to watch movies right now can lead to the discovery of some unexpected gems. The other side of that is that it’s really hard for any of these little surprises to grow into word-of-mouth successes.