A.A. Dowd, or Alex to his friends, is a writer and editor based in Chicago. He has held staff positions at The A.V. Club and Time Out Chicago, and is a member of the National Society of Film Critics.
Jason Statham returns to defend the world from giant, prehistoric sharks in The Meg 2: The Trench, an even-worse thriller that fails to do that premise justice.
Every Terminator sequel since T2 has been a commercial dud. With the advancement of special effects and the rise of AI, why can't the Terminator series succeed?
The 1993 sci-fi film Jurassic Park works as both an entertaining blockbuster and a revealing confession about the damage Steven Spielberg did to modern movies.
Tom Cruise returns once more as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One, the latest entry in Hollywood's most reliably entertaining franchise.
Skinamarink, The Outwaters, and Enys Men bring some welcome irrationality back to a horror genre that is too obsessed with blunt metaphors about past trauma.
Released 10 years apart, 28 Days Later and World War Z offered similar prophetic visions of global outbreak that make them more resonant in a post-COVID world.
Built around the only footage of a Polish town destroyed by the Nazis, Three Minutes: A Lengthening is at once a memorial, detective story, and gripping essay.
The brilliant French filmmaker Claire Denis returns with the disorienting love triangle Both Sides of the Blade, starring Juliette Binoche and Vincent Lindon.