Los Angeles Review of Books

Zosha Millman Los Angeles Review of Books Apr 13, 2026 This sensibility pairs perfectly with Park Chan-wook, a uniquely gifted visual filmmaker who specializes in telling stories that find raw humor and lush humanity in unusually dire circumstances. Go to Full Review No Other Choice (2025) 97% - -

Jourdain Searles Los Angeles Review of Books Feb 21, 2025 American cinema has always had a prudish approach to sexuality on-screen, linking kinks with villainy and mental instability. But Kidman has long gravitated toward sexual characters, and Babygirl is an ideal showcase for her fearless physicality. Go to Full Review Babygirl (2024) 76% - -

Asher Luberto Los Angeles Review of Books Aug 8, 2023 Past Lives is a film about time, missed opportunities and enduring connections, and Song ably juxtaposes private reflection with romantic longing. Go to Full Review Past Lives (2023) 95% 86%

Elissa Suh Los Angeles Review of Books Mar 2, 2022 In Drive My Car, Japanese director Rysuke Hamaguchi pressurizes the foundering emotional isolation in the Haruki Murakami story on which it is based to create an absorbing and discursive melodrama about communication, passivity, and regret. Go to Full Review Drive My Car (2021) 97% 78%

Natalia Winkelman Los Angeles Review of Books Dec 26, 2019 A heart-warmer and well-timed balm with a homespun quality that's hugely endearing. Go to Full Review A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019) 95% 92%

Charles Taylor Los Angeles Review of Books Jun 24, 2019 "The trick is just in understanding how to invite the spirit into the reality of each situation." Forty-seven years after it was filmed, this is the possibility of deliverance that Amazing Grace holds out to us. Go to Full Review Lost & Found (2017) 73% - -

Charles Taylor Los Angeles Review of Books Jan 18, 2019 Spotlight joins the ranks of the great American muckraking pictures, from I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang to On the Waterfront, All the President's Men, and The Border. Go to Full Review Spotlight (2015) 97% 93%

Charles Taylor Los Angeles Review of Books Jan 18, 2019 Driver marries the surface stoicism of the classic male hero with the rich inner life of a man of deep feeling. And that's why we feel so close to him. Go to Full Review Paterson (2016) 96% 72%

Charles Taylor Los Angeles Review of Books Jan 18, 2019 Malek holds the movie together through its shaky passages. Go to Full Review Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) 60% 85%

Natalia Winkelman Los Angeles Review of Books Jan 14, 2019 It succeeds in spinning an audacious and provocative pop tale, and one that, incidentally, stands in opposition to the mushy earworm of a moral offered up in A Star is Born. Go to Full Review Vox Lux (2018) 62% 37%

Scout Tafoya Los Angeles Review of Books Jan 10, 2019 Roma is a colossal mistake, a series of miscalculations born of unchecked hubris and hideous classism, the kind of film that drags the rest of its director's body of work down with it. Go to Full Review Roma (2018) 96% 72%

Max Nelson Los Angeles Review of Books Aug 8, 2018 What redeems the film, to my mind, is the productive tension it sets up between its melancholic picture of Europe in decay and the manic, whiz-bang adventure story that makes up its central narrative. Go to Full Review The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) 92% 91%

K. Austin Collins Los Angeles Review of Books Aug 9, 2017 This is no mere thought experiment. Can satire stop a bullet? Likely not. But it can provoke those of us who haven't, and can. Go to Full Review Chi-Raq (2015) 82% 53%