Letterboxd — Your life in film

There’s an intriguing idea and an incredible sequence in Scream VI—which is just enough to justify this follow-up to 2022’s Scream (which itself was just clever enough to justify reheating the series 11 years after Scream 4). The idea? That Sam (Melissa Barrera)—survivor of the slaughter in the 2022 film, where she was targeted because she was the unfortunate daughter of the killer in the original Scream)—has developed a bit of bloodlust in the wake of her trauma. The sequence?…

Rage in Heaven, one of Ingrid Bergman’s early Hollywood films, was something of a trial run for Gaslight, which she would make a few years later. Here, the man messing with her mind is Philip Monrell (Robert Montgomery), a manufacturing heir who quickly woos her and then begins to imagine/orchestrate a tempestuous love triangle involving them and his best friend (George Sanders). Montgomery mostly comes across as pathetic and ineffectual rather than a disturbing threat, while the clumsy plot and…

The most inventive thing about Creed II is the entrance of Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan) into the arena for the film’s climactic bout. The stadium goes dark, a dot of light circles the space until it stops above the entrance corridor, cueing spotlights down on Bianca (Tessa Thompson)—musical artist and Adonis’ lover—as she leads him to the ring while singing. Otherwise, this isn’t a repivoting of the Rocky franchise, as Creed was, as much as it is a remake…

The quintessential, mid-century art film: enigmatic, provocative, European, and shot in black and white. Expanding on the surreal dream sequences of 1957’s Wild Strawberries, writer-director Ingmar Bergman opens Persona with a nightmarish montage consisting of images of film reels, a slaughtered lamb, an impaled hand, and a silhouette of a young boy holding his hand up before the blurry, projected image of a woman’s face. From there, the movie settles into a fairly basic narrative, in which a chatty nurse…

The Hustler features one of Paul Newman’s most tarnished, self-destructive golden boys: “Fast” Eddie Felson. The performance came on the heels of 1958’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and pointed the way to 1963’s Hud and 1967’s Cool Hand Luke. Eddie is a small-time pool shark looking to take down the country’s best player: Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason). Eddie has the talent, but—in the words of his sketchy backer (George C. Scott, excellently slimy)—he’s lacking “character.” Whenever things start…

Every single performance shines in Causeway—from its two leads all the way down to the minor players who only appear in a handful of scenes. Jennifer Lawrence stars as Lynsey, an Army Corps of Engineers veteran struggling to recover from an explosion in Afghanistan. Back home in New Orleans, living with the mother she keeps at a purposeful distance, she finds solace in a new relationship with James, a car mechanic (Bryan Tyree Henry) who is carrying his own trauma,…