the @popcollin reviews

This beautiful and poignant slow-burner set in rural pre-Civil War New York stars Vanessa Kirby and Katherine Waterston as frontier wives who find solace and eventually love with each other. It’s a contemplative and deliberate indie film that easily sucks you into the women’s lives, and the powerful performances by […]

Imagine putting the great Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo in a room together with a blank pad of paper and a couple of pens… Barb and Star is exactly what you could see emerging a few days later. Occasionally looney and often silly but rarely not funny, it’s a hilarious […]

A passion project produced (and written and directed) by Sam Levinson during the pandemic, the film stars John David Washington and Zendaya as a frosty couple coming to terms with their relationship over the course of a late night. The real-time drama comes off like a ham-fisted attempt of a […]

It may be Viggo Mortensen’s directorial (and screenwriting) debut, but this story of a gay man trying to navigate his elderly father’s dementia (and subsequent racism, homophobia, misogyny, and general obnoxiousness) is unquestionably Lance Henriksen’s film from start to finish. Part period piece, part family drama, part super-dark comedy, it’s […]

Cleopatra Coleman thinks she may have found Mr. Right in the form of a guy (Nick Thune) who is an oddball eccentric, but what could have been a charming little indie-flick rom-com loses its footing around the halfway point and becomes a slogging mediation on death and grieving. The only […]

Owen Wilson stars in a horribly esoteric brain-burner about a man bouncing between a pseudo-dystopian “real world” and a utopian paradise with Salma Hayek as his guide (and pusher). The stars turn in fine performances, sure, but what starts as a decent sci-fi premise winds up being a messy, unresolved […]

Stanley Tucci gives a beautifully understated performance as a dementia patient headed out on one last road trip with his partner, played with equal brilliance by Colin Firth. It’s essentially a slow and gentle two-man show with few surprises along the way, before sputtering across the finish line with an […]

A gorgeous and sumptuous look at the fascinating excavation of Sutton Hoo near the start of World War II in England. Carey Mulligan plays landowner Edith Pretty, and Ralph Fiennes is the man who unearths what’s been called the most significant archeological find of the 20th century. It may sound […]

Denzel Washington and Rami Malek star as cops trying to track down a serial killer in 1990 Los Angeles. Written and directed by John Lee Hooker (from a script he’s been massaging for decades), the film is reminiscent of “Se7en” (though not nearly as grisly or violent). The story wanders […]