A campy survival comedy undone by its own third act While bursting onto the scene with the inventive comedy-horror  The Evil Dead  (1981), Sam Raimi also helped pioneer the superhero craze of the 2010s by directing the Tobey Maguire  Spider-Man  trilogy. Yet after such big-budget success, he has only returned to directing for the big screen once in the past thirteen years, with another Marvel film,  Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness  (2022). Those studio projects pr

A breathless con-man epic dismantling the myth of the American Dream The unmasking of “the American Dream” as one in which people have to con their way to the top is a thesis American cinema has explored before, going as far back as  The Sting  (1973) or  Paper Moon  (1973). These films emerged in the 1970s, during a moment of backlash and activism against American idealism shaped by Vietnam and a revived anti-capitalist fervor. American filmmaking was broken into by young, u

A Transcendental Take on Shakespeare Shakespeare has been a well of material for artists and filmmakers, not just through adapting his works, but his life as well.  Shakespeare in Love  (1998) was fun theatre-kid fanfiction, while  All Is True  (2018) was a deep cut for Shakespearean nerds. With her novel  Hamnet , Maggie O’Farrell chose to explore the most “un-Shakespearean” aspects of the bard’s life, choosing instead his wife Anne Hathaway (not the modern actress) as the p

A Bleak but Compelling Portrait of Motherhood Motherhood has been the surprising common theme for many 2025 releases, from  Die My Love  (2025) to  Hamnet  (2025),  Bring Her Back  (2025),  The Perfect Neighbor  (2025), and  Young Mothers  (2025). The latest to join this exploration of often unnamed, dark thoughts of motherhood is the searing  If I Had Legs I’d Kick You  (2025).   If I Had Legs I’d Kick You  follows Linda (Rose Byrne), a therapist and mother of a young daught