Bilge Ebiri Author Archive
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Bilge Ebiri is a film critic for New York and Vulture. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and the Criterion Collection.

  1. movie review
    Wicked Is As Enchanting As It Is ExhaustingJon M. Chu’s film adaptation of the hit musical has charm, but the bloat is inescapable.
  2. movie review
    ‘Some People Call It the City of Dreams, But I Don’t’Payal Kapadia’s new film, All We Imagine As Light, is a shimmering portrait of a Mumbai where everyone goes and nobody feels at home.
  3. movie review
    Look, I LaughedDeadpool & Wolverine isn’t particularly good. But it’s so determined to beat you down with its incessant irreverence that you might submit anyway.
  4. movie review
    Meanwhile, on Earth …In a moody new (mostly) live-action film from a great French animator, grief and aliens converge.
  5. movie review
    The Piano Lesson Can’t Quite Live Up to August Wilson’s PlayMalcolm Washington’s The Piano Lesson is a worthwhile and occasionally quite moving adaptation. But it lives uncomfortably between two forms.
  6. movie review
    Hugh Grant Was Born to Play the VillainGrant’s been terrific in recent years as characters of questionable moral standing, but his riveting turn in Heretic is something else entirely.
  7. best of 2024
    The Best Movies of 2024 (So Far)The best election drama of the year doesn’t take place in the United States.
  8. movie review
    The System Has Failed Clint EastwoodWith Juror No. 2, the director delivers a fine legal drama — but will anybody get to see it?
  9. movie review
    Netflix’s New Martha Stewart Documentary Makes Her More Powerful Than EverA new Netflix documentary charts the lifestyle mogul’s rise and fall (and rise) while giving us glimpses of her dark side.
  10. movie review
    Will the Year’s Most Powerful Documentary Ever Make It to Theaters?No Other Land, directed by a four-person Israeli-Palestinian collective, has won awards and acclaim. But no one in the U.S. wants to distribute it.
  11. movie review
    Your Monster Needs More Than an Outstanding Melissa BarreraThe script isn’t much, but the actress shines in this quaint little semi-musical monster-movie rom-com.
  12. movie review
    Is a Movie About Electing a Pope Allowed to Be This Entertaining?Conclave combines the pulp velocity of a great airport read with the gravitas of high drama.
  13. movie review
    Netflix’s Woman of the Hour Makes a Wild True Story Feel Dry and AcademicAnna Kendrick shows some promise as a director, and the film’s real-life serial-killer story is insane. But the whole film feels a bit too careful.
  14. movie review
    Rumours’ Goofy Political Satire Has a Giant Glowing BrainRumours, the latest from legendary Canadian director Guy Maddin, has a glorious B-movie sheen.
  15. movie review
    It’s No Wonder That Everyone Falls for AnoraSean Baker’s Anora latest is a movie about the way people look at each other, though it may not seem that way on the surface.
  16. parody and puppetry
    How Did Cate Blanchett Wind Up in the Year’s Funniest Movie?With her starring role in Guy Maddin’s Rumours, she’s made one of her strangest and most perverse pictures to date.
  17. movie review
    Smile 2’s Ideas Are Scarier Than the Movie ItselfWhat starts off as a thoughtful thriller set in the world of pop stardom winds up mired in the usual horror-movie clichés.
  18. movie review
    We Live in Time Failed to Move My Cold, Cold HeartI never really bought the onscreen relationship, in part because I could constantly feel the movie trying too hard.
  19. movie review
    The Apprentice Gets Dumber the Longer It Goes OnDirector Ali Abbasi’s portrait of a young Donald Trump never lives up to its strongest performance: Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn.
  20. nyff 2024
    How to Make an Elevated Dog MovieLiterate, sober, and bathed in Mozart needle drops, The Friend is a pet film for book clubs and graduate writing seminars.
  21. nyff 2024
    Grand Tour Is a Deliberately Ramshackle Yet Captivating Work of ArtMiguel Gomes’s globetrotting, language-spanning film gently refutes any conventional moviegoing expectations.
  22. profile
    Anora’s ‘Russian Timothée Chalamet’ Is Just Happy to Be Here“I’m just some weird guy who somehow became a part of Sean Baker’s movie,” says actor Mark Eydelshteyn.
  23. movie review
    Without Gore or Violence, This Serial-Killer Thriller Creeps Into Your SoulThe unnerving Red Rooms focuses not on the killer or his victims, but on the people fascinated by his crimes.
  24. movie review
    The Outrun Shows Us Saoirse Ronan at Her Most TranscendentDirector Nora Fingscheidt’s Sundance drama stars Ronan as a recovering alcoholic who’s back in her childhood home in the Orkney Islands.
  25. a long talk
    No One Sees the World Like RaMell RossThe director’s Nickel Boys is a staggering achievement — one we’ll be talking about for years to come.
  26. movie review
    Nickel Boys Is a Cinematic Experience Unlike Any OtherIn refusing a conventional, objective (and objectified) approach to suffering, director RaMell Ross resists easy attempts at pathos.
  27. sundance 2024
    Two Friends Talk, Gently and Openly, in Will & HarperThe most powerful parts of Will Ferrell and Harper Steele’s road trip documentary are also its most basic.
  28. a great debate
    Megalopolis Has Already WonFrancis Ford Coppola has created a movie we can all fight over. In that sense, maybe he has in fact achieved his dream.
  29. movie review
    Megalopolis Is a Work of Absolute MadnessThere is nothing in Francis Ford Coppola’s perhaps-final testament that feels like something out of a “normal” movie.
  30. movie review
    Saturday Night Isn’t Factually Accurate, But It Feels Spiritually TrueThe SNL movie plays like an anxiety dream, and the dreamer in this case is Lorne Michaels.
  31. a long talk
    ‘When CG Came Along, We Couldn’t Escape’How Lilo & Stitch co-director Chris Sanders found a sweet spot between hand-drawn and CG animation for his new film, The Wild Robot.
  32. movie review
    The Wild Robot Will Ruin YouChris Sanders’s The Wild Robot has a somewhat familiar set-up. But then you look at the movie — really look at it — and a whole new world opens up.
  33. dancing on the edge
    The World Wasn’t Ready for Body Double“Sometimes the style of the day is not the right way to appraise something innovative,” Brian De Palma says now.
  34. fall preview 2024
    Adam Pearson Is No WallflowerIn A Different Man, the actor has his biggest role to date in a dark comedy inspired by his upbeat personality.
  35. movie review
    Three of Our Best Actresses Elevate Netflix’s His Three DaughtersCarrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen, and Natasha Lyonne play three sisters watching over their dying father in Azazel Jacobs’s drama.
  36. a long talk
    This Might Be the Most Ambitious and Delirious Thing Joe Wright Has Ever DoneBefore he made M. Son of the Century, he was “watching the rise of the far right across the world” and growing “very concerned.”
  37. tiff 2024
    You’d Think Watching Tilda Swinton in an Apocalypse Movie Musical Would Be FunBut at two and a half very staid hours, Joshua Oppenheimer’s The End is a punishing picture.
  38. movie review
    Girls Will Be Girls Sneaks Up on YouShuchi Talati’s debut feature, one of the best films at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, is now in theaters.
  39. movie review
    Civil War Isn’t the Movie You Think It IsAlex Garland’s war epic is more about how we respond to images of conflict than it is about the conflict itself.
  40. tiff 2024
    Relay Might Be the Next Great Corporate Espionage ThrillerBut it’s the rare movie where I might recommend leaving ten minutes before the end.
  41. tiff 2024
    Nightbitch Is More of an Idea Than a MovieThe overarching meditative quality of Nightbitch is at once its most intriguing element and its greatest shortcoming.
  42. tiff 2024
    Ron Howard Has Finally Lost His MindWith his new film, Eden, the Hollywood stalwart lets the craziness take over, to his eternal credit.
  43. tiff 2024
    Thank the Cinema Gods, Mike Leigh Is BackHard Truths might be his funniest film in a long time, but as always, it’s the kind of laughter that comes with unnerving inevitabilities.
  44. movie review
    Netflix’s Rebel Ridge Is an Instant Slow-Burn Action ClassicDirector Jeremy Saulnier and star Aaron Pierre expertly ratchet up the tension in this thriller about a vet who tussles with corrupt small-town cops.
  45. tiff 2024
    It Sure Is Nice to Have Ben Stiller BackThe raucous Nutcrackers upholds Stiller’s place as one of American cinema’s funnier objects of humiliation.
  46. movie review
    Reagan Is Almost Fun-Bad But It’s Mostly Just Bad-BadDespite the campy fun of its casting, this hagiography is mostly just a big, shallow bore.
  47. movie review
    Hemingway’s Worst Novel Is Now a Slightly Better MovieIn Across the River and Into the Trees, a tortured Liev Schreiber wanders romantically through postwar Venice.
  48. festival season
    The 18 Movies We’re Most Excited to See at Venice and TIFFTwo major film festivals are happening over the next two weeks in Venice and Toronto, setting the film world’s agenda for the rest of the year.
  49. close your eyes
    Don’t Tell Victor Erice He Hasn’t Made a Film in 30 YearsThe Spanish director tells us about his first feature since 1992, the mesmerizing Close Your Eyes, and the art he’s made in the time since.
  50. movie review
    John Woo’s The Killer (2024) Is No John Woo’s The Killer (1989)The director’s American remake of his own film skips the florid romanticism and mythmaking, opting instead for a breezy modesty. It’s enormous fun.
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