Crime 101 was the perfect remedy for a rainy day in Santa Cruz County. The 2026 crime thriller, written and directed by Bart Layton and based on Don Winslow’s 2020 novella, delivers a suspenseful and thoroughly entertaining ride. It was also the most crowded I’ve seen the Capitola CineLux in quite some time. The standout […]

To summarize the immense complexity of Sinners, from screenwriter and director Ryan Coogler, feels like a near impossible task. It can be described as a horror film, a period piece, or even a musical. All three of these components were expertly woven to create the film that has broken the record for most Oscar nominations […]

Everybody Wants to Rule the World rolls over the closing credits of Marty Supreme—a haunting, hopeful choice for Josh Safdie’s new sports comedy‑drama, co‑written with Ronald Bronstein. Timothée Chalamet—who’s recently played Willy Wonka, Bob Dylan, and now Marty Mauser—may finally get his long‑overdue recognition at this year’s Academy Awards. As Mauser, he’s a scrappy 23‑year‑old […]

Song Sung Blue, written and directed by Craig Brewer is based on the 2008 documentary of the same name by Greg Kohs, follows the lives of Lightning and Thunder—Mike and Claire Sardina—a couple from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as they pursue their dream of bringing happiness and joy to others through music in the mid-1990s. It has […]

Bugonia is a dark comedy with splashes of horror and science fiction, and it leans fully into its own strangeness. It is based on a South Korean film, Save the Green Planet! The blend of genres can feel chaotic, but that unpredictability is part of its charm. Emma Stone reunites with Yorgos Lanthimos to explore […]

Housemaid Film Review by Molly Sullivan Housemaid, the thriller based on the bestselling novel by Freda McFadden and directed by Paul Feig, is entertaining, slightly cheesy fun—with more plot twists than a pretzel. McFadden is known for mysteries that make you think you’ve figured everything out, only to reveal that nothing is quite as it […]

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, written and directed by Rian Johnson, raises the bar  on mystery thrillers that Johnson himself has previously set. Proving yet again his brilliance in  crafting a whodunit mystery, his latest film dares to elevate the power of storytelling to heavenly  heights.   Set in the fictional small town […]

Nuremberg is a post–World War II psychological thriller by James Vanderbilt, adapted from Jack El-Hai’s The Nazi and The Psychiatrist. Russell Crowe is nearly unrecognizable as Hermann Göring, while Rami Malek is well cast as U.S. Army psychiatrist Dr. Douglas Kelley, who is sent to study Nazi war criminals and determine their fitness for trial. […]

  Poor Things, the second collaboration between Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and Oscar-winner Emma Stone, is an ecstatically subversive fantasy that imagines how an adult woman might relate to the world if she had somehow sidestepped years of social indoctrination. Beginning in a Gilliamesque version of Victorian era London dappled with whimsy and wonder, Poor […]

Dream Scenario is a smart and insightful film about human nature, and marks another late-career high point for Nicolas Cage.