A Sexy Blog

Is that a penis? No, really—is that Ralph Fiennes’s penis? I suppose we have to start there, because in Uberto Pasolini’s sepulchral take on the Odyssey, we’re given not just emotional bareness but the full-frontal variety—Ralph, exposed to the elements and the audience, and you do a little double-take in your seat. It’s the sort of unblushing exposure that might’ve stirred old Homer to put away his lyre and blink into the firelight. “They show you everything these days,” you can hear the gallery whisper—a groin-level “welcome home” that’s somehow more shocking than gods or monsters.

There’s something almost perversely frustrating about watching a film that’s desperate to be important but allergic to getting its hands dirty. Small Things Like These turns the Magdalene Laundries—a subject with the fury of a thousand scandals—into a very slow, very wet walk in the Irish mist. You...

Let’s skip the salute and call it what it is: “Greyhound” isn’t here to make you feel safe, or inspired, or even—God forbid—sentimental. No, Aaron Schneider’s relentless, nerve-needling orchestration, with Tom Hanks multitasking as both star and the hand sanding the script, is a straight shot of adrenaline distilled from the brine and gunmetal of war. Forget mothball nostalgia—this is war by way of a stress test, and every ping on the sonar is a test of your pulse-ox.

To readers who’ve never drawn breath in a room trembling with the thrum of a Game Boy and the sound of falling blocks—a film called Tetris may sound like yet another slab of corporate product-mongering, as if someone at Apple TV+ put on a cheap Soviet hat and decided to shovel us “content” with extra pixels. But sometimes you walk in wary and come out with a head full of adrenaline and an unexpected faith in the heart of the humble video game.

I went into “The Six Triple Eight” with the hungry anticipation of someone starved for history not just dusted off, but spun into living, breathing cinema. I wanted to see whether Tyler Perry—a director more haunted by melodrama than most soap operas—could swing the emotional sledgehammer of the 6888th’s story without demolishing its nuanced bones. Uplift and disappointment wound themselves together in ways I hadn’t quite bargained on. This is a film that, like the letters our heroines deliver, manages to arrive at its destination—but the journey is messier than the postmark might suggest.

Settling into my seat for Schindler’s List, I felt a nervous charge—equal parts anticipation and foreboding, as if I were about to audit a master class in empathy while simultaneously standing trial for the history of my own species. Spielberg has, over the years, proven himself a virtuoso in the theater of the heart, but with this film he trades in his usual sentimental coin for something far harsher, sharper—a shank, not a valentine.