Cinema News: Movies Update: ‘Beau Is Afraid,’ ‘Renfield’ and More

April 14, 2023

By Stephanie Goodman

Film Editor

Hi, film fans!

Debate is raging over "Beau Is Afraid," Ari Aster's latest "creep-out." That's how our critic Manohla Dargis described the film. After Aster's "Hereditary" and especially "Midsommar" wowed audiences, there was a lot of anticipation for the new feature, even if it clocks in at nearly three hours long. It stars Joaquin Phoenix as Beau, who faces obstacle after obstacle as he tries to make his way to his mother. The film has its partisans, on our staff and elsewhere. But Dargis was not impressed, calling it "a supersized, fitfully amusing, self-important tale of fear and loathing."

What did impress her? "Renfield," starring Nicholas Hoult as the title character with a demanding boss who happens to be Dracula and who happens to be played by Nicolas Cage. It's "a rocking action movie, with lots of blood and kick-ass fights, but also funny," Dargis writes.

To varying degrees, both films are horror comedies, a genre that's big this year. (See "M3gan" and "Cocaine Bear," among others.) I asked Jason Zinoman, a critic at large who focuses on comedy and wrote a book about horror, what he thought about the rise of the genre on the big screen this year. He argued that the 1980s were the true golden age for funny frights and said "Evil Dead 2" could be a candidate for funniest film of all time.

I did not see that coming.

Whatever you decide to watch, have fun at the movies!

Michele K. Short/Universal Pictures

CRITIC'S PICK

'Renfield' Review: Dracula, Worst Boss Ever

Nicholas Hoult stars as the long-suffering servant to Nicolas Cage's Count Dracula in this highly absurd, entertaining comedy.

By Manohla Dargis

Takashi Seida/A24

'Beau Is Afraid' Review: A Visit With Mommy Dearest

In Ari Aster's latest freakout, Joaquin Phoenix plays a sad sack who endures a crucible of suffering to see his monstrous mother. Paging Dr. Freud!

By Manohla Dargis

Crunchyroll

'Suzume' Review: Gods, Spells and Instagram Posts

Makoto Shinkai's latest animated film, about a girl who accidentally unleashes chaos over Japan, is at once mythical and thoroughly modern.

By Maya Phillips

Continue reading the main story

CRITICS' PICKS

Grasshopper Film and Gratitude Films

CRITIC'S PICK

'De Humani Corporis Fabrica' Review: Showing What We're Made Of

This eye-opening film from Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor immerses us in the landscapes and textures of the human body, as encountered in French hospitals.

By Nicolas Rapold

MOVIE REVIEWS

Bleecker Street

'Mafia Mamma' Review: An Offer You Can Refuse

Toni Collette has no chance of saving this jumble of Mob clichés and female empowerment.

By Jeannette Catsoulis

Jimmy Chin/National Geographic

'Wild Life' Review: Their Land Is Our Land

This documentary looks at the efforts of Kristine McDivitt Tompkins and Douglas Tompkins to preserve stretches of land in Argentina and Chile.

By Amy Nicholson

Utopia

'Sick of Myself' Review: When Main Character Syndrome Runs Amok

From Norway, this smug satire tracks the rise and fall of an attention-seeking young woman who intentionally disfigures herself by taking a sketchy Russian drug.

By Beatrice Loayza

Jonathan Hession/Screen Gems

'The Pope's Exorcist' Review: A Head-Spinning Genre Mash-Up

The buddy-priest action-comedy-horror hybrid we didn't know we wanted has finally landed.

By Elisabeth Vincentelli

Marcell Piti/Netflix

'The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die' Review: Flesh Wounds

Soldiers face off over the fate of England in this overbearingly glib costume drama.

By Robert Daniels

Showtime

'Personality Crisis: One Night Only' Review: New York Droll

David Johansen, once the lead singer for the New York Dolls, proves a first-rate raconteur in this documentary co-directed by Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi.

By Lisa Kennedy

Juno Films

'Hilma' Review: An Artist With Spirit

The film gets off to a rough start, but the director wins the audience back with his sincere connection to the artist Hilma af Klint.

By Amy Nicholson

Film Movement

'Passion' Review: Friends Fall Apart

Belatedly making its U.S. debut, a 2008 film from Ryusuke Hamaguchi ("Drive My Car") offers new insights into his abiding themes and sensibilities.

By Austin Considine

Continue reading the main story

NEWS & FEATURES

Neon	How to Build an Environmental Thriller in Five Not-So-Easy Steps The filmmakers and cast of "How to Blow Up a Pipeline" explain what it took to quickly, but precisely, put together their indie tale of sabotage. By Nicolas Rapold

Grasshopper Film/Gratitude Films

Wherever These Surgeries Went, the Camera Did, Too

In a radical experiment, the filmmakers Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor sought a scalpel-level view of operations in French hospitals.

By Ben Kenigsberg

Ariel Fisher for The New York Times

'Air' and the Argument for Letting the Talent Share in the Profits

The movie's focus (how Michael Jordan got a cut from Nike) reflects what its filmmakers, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, are trying to do in their new venture.

By Marc Tracy

Vadim Ghirda/Associated Press

Wes Anderson and Todd Haynes to Compete at Cannes Film Festival

More than 50 movies will be screened at the event, including Johnny Depp's first major film since a defamation trial and Martin Scorsese's latest epic.

By Alex Marshall

MORE REVIEWS

'Tommy Guns' Review: A Shape-Shifting Spectacle of Military Life

Portuguese boys train for service in occupied Angola in Carlos Conceição's drama, which incorporates elements of a ghost story.

By Natalia Winkelman

'Everything Went Fine' Review: To Be or Not to Be?

This French drama about a woman whose father wants a medically assisted death is both bracingly unsentimental and a touch inert.

By Devika Girish

'Rare Objects' Review: A Woman Under the Influence

Actors are given a long and generous leash in this sometimes compelling, sometimes tepid drama about mental illness from Katie Holmes.

By Calum Marsh

'Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman' Review: This Giant Frog Needs Your Help

An enigmatic adaptation of a short story collection by Haruki Murakami, this animated film is set shortly after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

By Claire Shaffer

'One True Loves' Review: A Romance Lost at Sea

A film adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid's novel has potential for drama, but it stumbles on stock melodrama.

By Brandon Yu

'The Lost Weekend: A Love Story' Review: When John Lennon Strayed

There's not much Lennon music heard in this doc about his affair with May Pang, and given how much Pang trashes his wife, Yoko Ono, it's no surprise it was withheld.

By Glenn Kenny