David Fincher’s The Killer — a deceptively layered hitman yarn — closes out this year’s New York Film Festival. With a minimalist veneer that belies its toothy takedown of capitalism, hustle culture, and our deteriorating gig economy, Fincher’s latest mines new tensions from the disciplined loner trope. Many will mistake The Killer’s stripped-down trappings for a minor work, but it’s every bit as incisive and wrinkled as Fight Club or The Social Network.

Welcome to my dispatch from this year’s SXSW Film Festival. As usual, I won’t be writing full reviews of everything I see at the festival, but there are plenty of notable films in this year’s slate that I still wanted to cover. Here are the capsule reviews for 2023’s SXSW: Tetris, Furies, If You Were the Last, and Late Night With the Devil. Minor Spoilers Ahead…

The streaming wars have all but killed the traditional release model for television, but the fall season continues to house the biggest surges in new shows and season premieres. I spent the last week catching up on the biggest TV releases of the past month to parse what’s worth your time and what isn’t. Here are some quick reviews of Cowboy Bebop, Hellbound, Yellowjackets, Dexter: New Blood, Invasion, and Chucky. Minor spoilers ahead…

Midnight Mass is the best thing Mike Flanagan has ever done. A searing, complete work at the intersections of faith and doubt, life and death, it’s genre storytelling at its most emotionally rich. Contemplative, dialogue-driven horror that paints its themes with a dark and heavy brush, Midnight Mass is utterly transfixing with its layered performances and shocking swerves. The entire cast is fantastic, but people will be talking about Hamish Linklater’s turn as Father Paul for a very long time. Minor spoilers ahead…

Gateway horror icon R.L. Stine’s marginally graduated Goosebumps predecessor is brought to bloody life in Netflix’s Fear Street trilogy. A series of three films -1994, 1978, and 1666 - Fear Street pulls an uneven potpourri of influences together with a familiar aesthetic, but the whole ends up being a surprisingly potent tapestry of terror, perfect for gorehounds and horror neophytes alike. Minor spoilers ahead…

Taking a blood-soaked buzzsaw to his signature pretensions, Zack Snyder delivers his best film since 2004’s Dawn of the Dead. Yes, it’s bloated, and yes, it features the filmmaker’s penchant for stylized pop-video aesthetics, but Army of the Dead is clear and fun where it matters. Snyder’s construction of a new zombie mythos - coupled with bombastic action - is nothing short of delightful. Minor spoilers ahead…

Rosamund Pike shines in J Blakeson’s pitch-black neo-noir, I Care a Lot. Biting, cynical, and featuring a welcome return of the villain protagonist, the film finds exhilaration through wickedness and hairpin turns, even if its messaging remains muddled. I Care a Lot balances on the knife’s edge - not always successfully - with its unrepentant characters, but through slick construction and a bevy of crackling performances, it’s remarkably efficient at finding glee in moral vacuum. Minor spoilers ahead…

Seemingly out of nowhere, with a trailer released only a month ago, Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit has captured the hearts and minds of audiences everywhere, and for good reason - it’s quite fun. Pure escapism through the lens of high-stakes chess, the limited series stars Anya Taylor-Joy as Beth Harmon, a child prodigy that enters the male-dominated realm of one of the world’s oldest strategy games. With a captivating lead performance and a meticulous attention paid to its period details, The Queen’s Gambit looks to dose chess with some cinematic octane, and it largely succeeds despite its hesitation to dig deep. Minor spoilers ahead…

Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball, Beyond the Lights) switches up genres with a blockbuster adaptation of Greg Rucka’s comic book, The Old Guard. A tale of immortal warriors inducting a new member into their ranks, Netflix’s The Old Guard suffers from a thin plot and a largely forgettable villain, but the film’s quieter moments shine, tied together with great performances from Charlize Theron and Kiki Layne. Minor spoilers ahead…

The digital flood of true crime continues - this time, with the Netflix revival of a 90s cult favorite, Unsolved Mysteries. Helmed by the original series’ creators, John Cosgrove and Terry Dunn Meurer, this new series attempts to toe the line between nostalgia and freshness, but often comes up short in delivering either. Minor spoilers below…

Profoundly letting go of all subtleties, Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods acts as an urgent and vital exploration of the legacy of war and its impact on Black soldiers. Utilizing its ensemble cast and an arsenal of directorial bravura, Lee creates a powerful parallel to our dystopian times and raises an incisive commentary on racism through the lens of the Vietnam War. Minor spoilers ahead…

I watch a lot of TV and movies, but my obsession with writing in-depth reviews and articles often gets in the way of wider and more frequent coverage. This new column will be a way to remedy that, allowing me to write shorter and more digestible reviews, reserved primarily for when I don’t have a full review’s worth of thoughts to share about a particular film. On this week’s Capsule Reviews, we’re taking a look at Extraction, Deerskin, The Wretched, and Blood Quantum…

While HBO and Netflix are currently hogging the premium cable and streaming spotlights, Cinemax (itself an HBO spin-off) has been operating in the background, churning out respectable entertainment right under everyone’s noses. In addition to its thrilling Bruce Lee passion project, Warrior, Cinemax has crafted yet another winner with its twisty neo-noir crime drama, Jett. Minor spoilers ahead...

Netflix’s The Perfection is a nasty little film that has lofty aspirations. Part love story, part body horror, and part revenge tale, director Richard Shepard aims high with his twist-laden story, but is never fully able to rise above the trappings of B-movie camp. Elevated by some fantastically deranged performances from Allison Williams and Logan Browning, The Perfection is popcorn fare disguised as high-brow horror. Mild spoilers ahead...

February 15th saw the premieres of not just one, but two super-team television shows. The first, Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy, is based upon a popular Dark Horse comic book by My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way and artist Gabriel Bá; the second, Doom Patrol on the DC Universe streaming platform, is adapted from a long-running DC Comics series. And while both shows focus on a ragtag team of superpowered misfits coming together to fight evil, one is clearly better than the other in the way that it translates its source material to screen. Mild spoilers ahead for both The Umbrella Academy and Doom Patrol.

Netflix’s South Korean zombie horror series, Kingdom, debuted on January 25th. An adaptation of a popular webcomic by Kim Eun-hee and artist Yang Kyung-il, Kingdom’s six-episode first season is breezy, zombified fun. The series gets a lot of compelling mileage out of its unique setting and premise - which is essentially a mashup of period drama and zombie horror - but has a difficult time rising above the conventions of both genres. Minor spoilers ahead…

The third and possibly final season of Travelers, the cult Canadian import on Netflix, arrived in December of last year. An unabashed favorite here at Strange Harbors, I wrote extensively about the show last year in an Under the Radar feature, extolling the show’s bold storytelling and vivid character work of its first two seasons. The series’ third season continues this trend with a propulsive narrative and a heartwrenchingly bittersweet final act, even if it suffers from some wheel-spinning and a midseason sag. Mild spoilers ahead...

The Haunting of Hill House is one of Netflix’s best original series. Loosely based upon the 1959 classic gothic horror novel of the same name by Shirley Jackson, Hill House is deftly adapted by horror veteran Mike Flanagan with equal parts terror, suspense, and melancholy. One of the biggest contributors to the quality of Netflix’s newest ghostly series is the show’s fifth episode, “The Bent-Neck Lady.” The episode is not only the best of the series, but one of the best episodes of television in 2018, with tinges of Lost’s “The Constant” and this year’s equally masterful “The Queen” from Hulu’s Castle Rock. Major spoilers ahead...