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About Us
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2022
2021
2020
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Bad Rap: Meet the Rappers Shattering Asian American Stereotypes
Lacy Lew Nguyen Wright 5/30/17 Lacy Lew Nguyen Wright 5/30/17

Bad Rap: Meet the Rappers Shattering Asian American Stereotypes

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Tribeca 2017 Review: Shadowman
Lacy Lew Nguyen Wright 5/24/17 Lacy Lew Nguyen Wright 5/24/17

Tribeca 2017 Review: Shadowman

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Tribeca 2017 Review: Wasted!
Lacy Lew Nguyen Wright 5/23/17 Lacy Lew Nguyen Wright 5/23/17

Tribeca 2017 Review: Wasted!

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Baby’s First Cult Classics: The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Stephan Cho 5/1/17 Stephan Cho 5/1/17

Baby’s First Cult Classics: The Rocky Horror Picture Show

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Latest Moviegoer Reviews

Featured
Project Hail Mary: 2026’s Hopecore Movie
Lucas Jeffrey
Project Hail Mary: 2026’s Hopecore Movie
Lucas Jeffrey

Project Hail Mary is an adaptation of Andy Weir’s 2021 novel of the same name. It follows science teacher Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) after he wakes up on a spaceship with no memory of how he got there. As his memory returns, he also gains an unlikely friendship in Rocky the Eridian alien. The acting is great, the screenplay is charming and full of heart, and the visuals are striking.

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Lucas Jeffrey
From Titane to Longlegs: How Neon Quietly Took Over Horror
Henry Keefer
From Titane to Longlegs: How Neon Quietly Took Over Horror
Henry Keefer

If you asked most people a few years ago who was “winning” indie horror, the answer would've been obvious: A24, of course. But between 2021 and now, something shifted. Not all at once and not always clearly, but deliberately. While A24 horror started to feel scattered, Neon built something more strategic.

What’s interesting is that Neon didn’t start with a clear horror identity at all. It was built over time, and I track that evolution in three distinct pseudo-phases: pre-Titane, post-Titane, and post-Longlegs. Each phase had a different strategy. First it was discovering talent, then experimenting with identity, and finally scaling into something that looks a lot like dominance.

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Henry Keefer
Ranking the Films of Pasolini
Henry Franklin
Ranking the Films of Pasolini
Henry Franklin

Last year marked the fiftieth anniversary of the death of one of the most important filmmakers of all time. In early November 1975, Pier Paolo Pasolini was murdered. Perhaps the killing was carried out by the militant right-wing group Banda della Magliana–or maybe by an overzealous fan. The case remains open in Rome after the original suspect retracted his confession more than twenty years ago. 

I undertake to rank all twelve of Pasolini’s feature films. Of course, the scope of his oeuvre extends beyond these; I recommend in particular his street documentary Love Meetings and his excellent meta short film La Ricotta. 

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Henry Franklin
A Brief Defense of "Wuthering Heights"
Luke Weidemoyer
A Brief Defense of "Wuthering Heights"
Luke Weidemoyer

Emerald Fennell said as much herself: "The thing for me is that you can't adapt a book as dense and complicated and difficult as this book. I can't say I'm making ‘Wuthering Heights.’ It's not possible. What I can say is I'm making a version of it." She put the title in quotation marks intentionally, providing a disclaimer that this film is not the classic text. Every adaptation imposes a vision, turning the source material into something else.

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Luke Weidemoyer
The Oscar Nominees You Haven't Seen
Luke Weidemoyer
The Oscar Nominees You Haven't Seen
Luke Weidemoyer

Even the most devoted cinephiles rarely tune in to the nominees for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short. Most film buffs, myself included, don’t make it to the short film programs or indie showcases where these films typically screen, and many of them quickly disappear into obscurity after their premieres. Perhaps because of this invisibility, documentary shorts have the potential to carry some of the sharpest political messages in today’s cinema. This year’s nominees certainly exemplify this potential, covering urgent topics like gun violence, war, protest, reproductive rights, and, um, wandering donkeys. Despite their small audiences, these films deserve a closer look. They are brimming with provocative voices, even if this year’s particular batch sometimes fails to stick the landing.

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Luke Weidemoyer
Nuremberg: Vanderbilt’s Political Mirror
Rishabh Ambavanekar
Nuremberg: Vanderbilt’s Political Mirror
Rishabh Ambavanekar

The new movie Nuremberg attempts to convey the same message, albeit through a more character and relationship-driven lens. The overall theme, though, remains the same: Nazi’s aren’t some abstract villain–they are real, and they are human. 


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Rishabh Ambavanekar
The Housemaid: A Thriller That Wants to Go Viral More Than It Wants to Breathe
Mark Street
The Housemaid: A Thriller That Wants to Go Viral More Than It Wants to Breathe
Mark Street

There are two different movies inside The Housemaid. One stars Amanda Seyfried, who turns in a performance so surprisingly controlled, so layered, and so quietly unnerving that every time she appears the film sharpens. The other stars Sydney Sweeney, who is asked to anchor the entire story but never finds a pulse for the role. The gap between them becomes the film’s defining tension—and not the kind it intended.


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Mark Street
Beneath the Skin: Black Swan 15 Years Later
Daniel Knorr
Beneath the Skin: Black Swan 15 Years Later
Daniel Knorr

15 years ago today, Daren Aronofsky’s psychological thriller Black Swan hit theaters for the first time. The film was seen as a return to form for the director, bringing back much of the neurotic style that his infamous 2000 film Requiem for a Dream had–now dressed in the suffocating clothes of ballet instead of drug induced paranoia. In the time between these two films, Aronofsky released the oddball sci-fi film The Fountain (2006) to mixed reviews, and the quiet and candid The Wrestler (2008) to slightly better reception. Both of these films were a stark departure from Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream and Aronofsky’s affinity for reveling in his audience's misery. Now 15 years since its release, Black Swan has seen continued life in the misguided discourses of social media comment sections. Before I critique these discourses however, I would like to critically discuss the film detached from its legacy and reception. 


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Daniel Knorr
Is This Thing On?: What Bradley Cooper Really Needed
Lucas Jeffrey
Is This Thing On?: What Bradley Cooper Really Needed
Lucas Jeffrey

Is This Thing On? stars Will Arnett as a middle-aged father going through a divorce who finds solace in stand-up comedy. And while, yes, Alex (Arnett) may not be particularly great at stand-up (to begin the film, anyway), the movie is surprisingly very funny. I walked in with relatively low expectations, assuming I’d get a laugh here or there, but I was laughing constantly through the movie.

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Lucas Jeffrey
Kiss of the Spider Woman: A Meta-Musical That Strangles On Its Own Threads
Henry Keefer
Kiss of the Spider Woman: A Meta-Musical That Strangles On Its Own Threads
Henry Keefer

For all its chaos, Kiss of the Spider Woman commits. Hard. Condon isn’t phoning it in, he’s trying to capture something much bigger than this movie can contain. It’s a movie about escaping, and even if the fantasy starts to collapse, I can still feel the ambition.


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Henry Keefer
Richard Linklater’s Big Year: Nouvelle Vague and Blue Moon
Henry Franklin
Richard Linklater’s Big Year: Nouvelle Vague and Blue Moon
Henry Franklin

This year, Linklater opened and closed the festival season with two films: Blue Moon, which hit stateside cinemas this past weekend, and Nouvelle Vague (to be released theatrically on Halloween and then streaming on Netflix, the film’s US distributor, by the middle of next month). Though radically different formally and thematically, both films freeze exquisite moments in time—evoking more than just texture and sound, but a feeling of living in a time and place divorced very much from our own.

 


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Henry Franklin
One Battle After Another: PTA’s Shockingly Poignant Popcorn Blockbuster 
Matthew Noriega
One Battle After Another: PTA’s Shockingly Poignant Popcorn Blockbuster 
Matthew Noriega

One Battle After Another is less clearly About Something as it is About a Multitude of Things. I left the theater thoroughly speechless, not necessarily because I was so gobsmacked by the film, but rather because there was so much to pull at that I couldn’t really discern what to focus on. 


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Matthew Noriega
Ranking the Films of Fernando Di Leo’s Milieu Trilogy
Arica Himmel
Ranking the Films of Fernando Di Leo’s Milieu Trilogy
Arica Himmel

In Di Leo’s trilogy, you’ll instantly recognize the stunt dummies. You’ll also notice that most characters getting riddled with bullets never bleed; when they do, the blood is comically bright red. As funny as this was, it was still somewhat unsettling for me to watch—but also slightly refreshing. I’m glad that technology has progressed, but I don’t know if I’m ever dying to see what it’s like when someone's head is “properly” blown off.

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Arica Himmel
Why Luca Guadagnino Got Snubbed at the 2025 Oscars
Luke Weidemoyer
Why Luca Guadagnino Got Snubbed at the 2025 Oscars
Luke Weidemoyer

Luca Guadagnino is no stranger to critical acclaim - or Oscar snubs. In 2024, the Italian director delivered two strikingly different but equally lauded films: Challengers, a steamy, slow-burn tennis romance, and Queer, a moody adaptation of the William S. Burroughs novella. Both films were praised by critics, yet neither received a single Oscar nomination.

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Luke Weidemoyer
In The Shadow of The Brutalist
Luke Weidemoyer
In The Shadow of The Brutalist
Luke Weidemoyer

Yes, The Brutalist is long. It’s pretentious. It’s ambitious and unapologetically grand. But this is what makes it interesting. It’s a film that forces you to bear witness to an unchecked ego and sit with that discomfort. Far from being a stock tale of genius, the film is a complex (and flawed) meditation on the forces that can elevate and destroy a man.

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Luke Weidemoyer
How I Finally Understood The Substance
Allie Frydrych
How I Finally Understood The Substance
Allie Frydrych

I didn’t like The Substance at first, likely because I was trying to avoid the reality that most women, indeed, are victims. That conversations around women’s bodies go beyond mere comments or jokes—they compose our being. They dictate how long others deem us worthwhile partners or employees. They tell us to spend our New Year’s at the gym instead of with our families. To spend that extra minute dawdling in front of the bathroom mirror. To gawk when we see a woman over 60 on our movie screen. And that no matter how good at your job you are, everyone is talking about your boobs.

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Allie Frydrych
A Face in the Crowd: Prescience at What Cost?
Henry Franklin
A Face in the Crowd: Prescience at What Cost?
Henry Franklin

There is one film, though, that I believe deserves the modern parallels it often invokes: A Face in the Crowd. Released in 1957 to moderate acclaim, the film is the work of Hollywood envelope-pusher Elia Kazan and screenwriter and novelist Budd Schulberg, whose eponymous collection of short stories the film is based on. A Face in the Crowd focuses on the meteoric rise of a jailbird from Arkansas.

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Henry Franklin
A Beginner's Guide to the French New Wave
Luke Weidemoyer
A Beginner's Guide to the French New Wave
Luke Weidemoyer

The French New Wave was a radical departure from conventional filmmaking. Utilizing jump cuts and location shooting on a yet-unseen scale, the movement prioritized low-budget, singular films that allowed creatives to break out of the confines of the studio system. New Wave films were further proof for domestic and international audiences that film was more than mere entertainment.

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Luke Weidemoyer
Death, Possession and the Undead: Community and Horror Constructs in Fourth Cinema
Sagnik A.
Death, Possession and the Undead: Community and Horror Constructs in Fourth Cinema
Sagnik A.

I first argue for extending the class of common constructs for analyzing horror media to two more constructs: constraints and character responses. I then analyze horror films belonging to the Fourth Cinema, i.e. Indigenous cinema as described by Barry Barclay. I plan to argue that these films have a distinct conceptualization of these three constructs that stems from ideas about community.

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Sagnik A.
The Sage is not Humane: Sam Peckinpah’s Five Best Films
Henry Franklin
The Sage is not Humane: Sam Peckinpah’s Five Best Films
Henry Franklin

Sam Peckinpah occupies a unique station in the canon of American film directors because he found success just before the creative floodgates of New Hollywood. He then went on to push the boundaries of what could and couldn’t be shown on film—crafting works more transgressive than many of his younger peers. This made him the target of studio meddling and censorship, but his legacy is nonetheless founded on grit, ingenuity, and daring.

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Henry Franklin

The Moviegoer is a student-run organization at the University of Pennsylvania dedicated to film and media criticism. Our mission is to provide insightful coverage of popular culture, written by and for the Penn community. We publish articles on our website and on social media, organize screening events for our members, and hold weekly meetings in the Kelly Writer’s House–open to all. The Moviegoer seeks to provide a safe and inviting space for writers and movie buffs to come together and share their opinions.

Interested in joining The Moviegoer? Get in touch.

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