This is one of those stories where each detail makes you a little more excited. Per Variety: 1. St. Vincent, aka Annie Clark, is directing a feature film.2. It’s an adaptation of an Oscar Wilde work. 3. It’s the Picture of Dorian Gray. 4. But it’s genderswapped. 5. So Dorian is a woman now. Also: Elle screenwriter David Birke will write the script, and there’s no word yet about the cast or release date. There have been a ton of Dorian Gray adaptations — most recently Penny Dreadful tackled the...

INGRID GOES WESTDirected by Matt SpicerOut August 114/5 BUST rating Ingrid Goes West is an uncanny portrait of how social media allows users to curate their lives beyond recognition. Aubrey Plaza stars as Ingrid, a mentally unstable millennial whose mother recently died. After a stint in an institution, she finds she’s inherited enough money to move to the West Coast and remake herself in the image of Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen), an Instagram tastemaker who’s basically Coachella personified. Taylor’s got it all – the artsy husband,...

After watching This Beautiful Fantastic through twice, I’m still not one hundred percent sure if I liked it or not. It’s an odd little independent film, calling to mind a sort of de-saturated, languid Pushing Daisies in its storybook-like narrative and set pieces. Starring Jessica Brown Findlay (Downton Abbey), Andrew Scott (Sherlock), Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton), and Jeremy Irvine (War Horse), This Beautiful Fantastic tells the story of Bella Brown, a meek, antisocial orphan with obsessive-compulsive tendencies who longs to be a children’s author, and...

Moana is an absolute revelation to me, and I weep whenever I watch it. This is, I think, because above all else, Moana is a story about women. Though a male demigod features prominently in the movie, at its heart, Moana is about the coming of age of a young woman, about her relationships with the matriarchs who came before her, and about the feminine forms of heroism that she is uniquely capable of performing. The first heroic act we see Moana perform (the first act...

Oscar-nominated screenwriter Taylor Sheridan (Sicario and Hell or High Water) completes his loosely linked American West trilogy with his directorial debut, Wind River. Travelling deep into the mountains of Wyoming, this film has all the traditional makings of a thriller. Though, more importantly, Wind River highlights the issue of undocumented violence against Native American women. In short, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner) discovers the body of a young girl buried deep in the snow-covered wilderness of the Wind River Indian Reservation....

Halle Berry's new road-bound thiller, Kidnap, opens with a montage of home videos of a baby boy, Frankie, (narrated by an off-screen Berry) as he grows from squishy infant to super cute and still squishy toddler. No one else makes an appearance in the clips, and it becomes evident that the baby and his mother are on their own, with the child's father nowhere to be seen.  During an outing with her son, Berry’s character, Karla, literally takes six adult steps to the side to answer...

After the controversy surrounding 13 Reasons Why and its glamorization of teen suicide, many were concerned that Netflix’s new original movie, To The Bone, would fall victim to the same issues with its focus on eating disorders. The film, released on July 14, centers on 20-year-old Ellen (Lily Collins) as she battles through an almost disastrous journey with anorexia and struggles to recover from the eating disorder that is quickly engulfing her entire life. While critical reception was more positive regarding To The Bone, many, including...

In just over a decade, she worked with the greatest directors in Golden Age Hollywood: Huston, Wilder, Cukor, and Hawks. Moviegoers paid $200,000,000 to watch her project her trademark combination of atomic-age sexuality and childlike, vulnerable astuteness. She was born into an orphan’s chaos and lived the shadowy Los Angelean life of a Raymond Chandler character — losing her soul in a struggle for acceptance, and then her life trying to re-find it. I did what they said and all it got me was a lot...

Check It is a must-see documentary that shows a summer in the lives of LGBTQ+ teenagers in Washington, D.C. The film, which is directed by Dana Flor and Toby Oppenheimer and executive produced by Steve Buscemi, is being promoted by Louis C. K., who has it on his website where you can watch it for $5. The film is a very real and clear depiction of  teenagers who, growing up, were surrounded by intolerance and bullied. They formed a gang, because there’s safety in numbers. They bonded beyond...

Jessica Williams logged countless hours on the Daily Show before departing in 2016, but she has not yet appeared in many movies. Her biggest film role so far has been a supporting role in 2015’s People Places Things, where she played Regina Hall’s daughter. But fans of Williams have been yearning to see her star in her own film — and Netflix’s the Incredible Jessica James — directed by Jim Strouse, who also directed Williams in People Places Things — finally gives us that. Williams stars as...