Peter Debruge

The loftier and more dangerous the goal, the finer the line that separates the Guinness Book of World Records from the Darwin Awards. At a certain point, surviving is the only real difference. Do-or-die marathon swimmer Diana Nyad dreamed of swimming from Cuba to Florida. That’s 110 miles of unpredictable open ocean. Prior to her, […]

Four years ago, before COVID turned everything upside-down, a new Asian masterpiece world premiered virtually unnoticed at the Toronto Film Festival. I’m referring to “A Sun,” a multi-faceted Taiwanese family saga from director Chung Mong-Hong that seemed to shift and evolve as it unfolded, challenging what audiences though they knew about the characters. Tucked away […]

There is much that is lovely to gaze upon in the elegantly tailored documentary “Invisible Beauty,” about fashion maverick Bethann Hardison, whose role in her industry, starting in the late ’60s and continuing into the present, has been remarkable personally and game-changing culturally. Those five decades — hers and the industry’s — are expertly woven […]

Cages can’t contain the sheer amount of imagination on offer in “Sing Sing” — not just in the way director Greg Kwedar and his writing and producing partner Clint Bentley conceived of the prison-set drama, but also as an animating force among its characters. Apart from Colman Domingo and a few others, most of the […]

While it’s easy to imagine lawyers screaming “objection, your honor!” to the exaggerated courtroom theatrics of “The Burial,” good luck convincing audiences that this David v. Goliath legal showdown between a small-time Southern funeral home operator and an unethical Canadian billionaire should have played out any other way. Demonstrating talents far beyond her 2017 indie […]

Early in his career, comedian Kumail Nanjiani did a bit about a new drug called “cheese,” which, if you break down the ingredients, turns out to be Tylenol PM mixed with heroin. “So really, it’s heroin,” he joked. “Heroin’s doing the heavy lifting.” That line was going through my mind as I watched “Pain Hustlers,” […]

Does it count as a white savior movie if the white character is the one who needs saving? In “Next Goal Wins,” the world’s top-grossing indigenous director, Taika Waititi, retells the story of how American Samoa went from having the world’s worst soccer team to, well, not the worst. While a white man was involved, […]

In Cord Jefferson’s idea-dense “American Fiction,” no one wants to publish literary professor Thelonious Ellison’s latest novel. Thelonious — or “Monk” to his friends — has delivered a modern reworking of Aeschylus’ “The Persians” (hardly bestseller material to begin with), but all the industry can see is the color of his skin. The editors compliment […]

“Finestkind,” the name of both Brian Helgeland’s new film and the high-line fishing boat Tommy Lee Jones captains within it, is one of those words that New Englanders find hard to define, but seem to have no trouble using in a sentence. It means quality — of fish, of people, of principles — and it […]

More often than not, Hayao Miyazaki’s heroes have been young women — from Ponyo to Princess Mononoke, mischief-seeking Kiki to the two sisters spirited away by furry forest guardians in “My Neighbor Totoro.” That’s the most obvious departure the anime maestro’s fans will notice in “The Boy and the Heron”: It’s about a boy, Mahito […]