Volcano’s Reel Reviews

By Vincent Volcano, retired Hellwood arsonist of emotion and defender of smoldering craft. Flames Fade, but Classics Burn Forever! In Your Dreams arrives sleepwalking into theaters November 7 and onto Netflix November 14, which is perfect: the film is basically a bedtime story with a marketing calendar. It’s a PG animated “adventure” about siblings surfing […]

By Vincent Volcano, emeritus arsonist of emotion and retired ringmaster of Hellwood’s practical pyrotechnics Flames Fade, but Classics Burn Forever! Initial sparks Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value arrives in the mortal multiplex like a carefully arranged matchbook: tasteful, melancholy, and suspiciously nonflammable. It’s a family psychodrama about an aging auteur who tries to exhume his past

By Vincent Volcano, Retired Hellwood Arsonist of Emotion, Scarf Ablaze Flames Fade, but Classics Burn Forever! Netflix has tossed another log on the IP bonfire with The Twits, a Roald Dahl adaptation so politely mischievous you can practically hear the executives whisper, “Please don’t upset anybody, but do sell the lunchboxes.” Phil Johnston, who once

By Vincent Volcano, Hellwood’s retired arsonist-in-chief, still wearing the red scarf and the scars from practical flame bars. Flames Fade, but Classics Burn Forever! Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia opens with the promise that “It all starts with something magnificent,” which is exactly what I told a producer once before they replaced my hand-built lava geysers with

By Vincent Volcano, Retired Arsonist of Emotion I sat down to After The Hunt with my fiery red scarf and the foolish hope that Luca Guadagnino, patron saint of sweaty desire and tennis elbow, would bring heat to a campus potboiler. Instead, I got a Yale bake sale of moral panic, a Woody Allen-font cosplay,

By Vincent Volcano, retired arson auteur and full-time sprinkler system nemesis. Flames Fade, but Classics Burn Forever! Roofman arrives boasting “Based on actual events. And terrible decisions,” which is refreshingly honest marketing for a studio product that looks lovingly at a man who weaponizes the McFlurry machine’s only consistent feature: being broken. Derek Cianfrance, patron

By Vincent Volcano, Hellwood’s Retired Arsonist-in-Chief. Flames Fade, but Classics Burn Forever! Prime Video has delivered a new care package to the ninth circle: Play Dirty, a Shane Black Christmas crime caper stuffed with F-bombs, double-crosses, and the sort of faux-gritty gloss you get when the blood is digital and the snow is imported from

By Vincent Volcano, retired ringmaster of Hellwood melodrama, scarf ablaze, temper hotter Flames Fade, but Classics Burn Forever! Eleanor the Great arrives like a carefully arranged fruit platter at a funeral: respectful, tasteful, and somehow missing the actual nutrients. Scarlett Johansson sits in the director’s chair for the first time, and to her credit, she

By Vincent Volcano, Retired Hellwood Arsonist of Emotion, Scarf Aflame Ah, Slow Horses, the spy caper where Britain’s least employable intelligence clerks shuffle through London like hungover chess pieces—and somehow still checkmate MI5. Season 5 slinks in on September 24 like a ferret in a Savile Row suit, adapting Mick Herron’s London Rules while Apple

By Vincent Volcano, retired Hellwood arsonist of pathos, current burner of bridges Flames Fade, but Classics Burn Forever! What, pray tell, comes after 11? In this necromanced encore, apparently “nostalgia in D minor.” Rob Reiner reassembles the sainted fossils—Guest, McKean, Shearer—and ladles on enough backstage banter to fill the empty mausoleums where modern screenwriting once