Aloha movie review: hello, and good-bye
A mess of a romantic dramedy full of colonialistic offensiveness, forced quirkiness, implausible emotion, and oblivious masculine self-centeredness.
Year: 2016
Where Are the Women? Little Boy
The only female character with any presence is the mother of the young male protagonist… and she barely even does any mothering.
Little Boy movie review: faith-based bomb
A shamefully miscalculated tale of whimsy and come-to-Jesus inspiration with a bizarrely inappropriate haze of Norman Rockwell-esque nostalgia.
a few thoughts on House of Cards S4 (and open thread)
I adore this show, but it’s hugely depressing. I would love to call it cynical, but I suspect it’s all too realistic. [This post is not behind the paywall.]
Grimsby (aka The Brothers Grimsby) movie review: grim indeed
A soul-crushing experience: lazy, cheap, lurid, and stupid. Painfully unfunny and pointless. Sacha Baron Cohen now panders to those he once rightly mocked.
Hail, Caesar! movie review: far from perfect, but pretty swell
Full of the Coen Brothers’ usual exuberant joie de cinema, and a helluva lot of fun, but too scattershot to ever settle on saying the things it has to say.
The Boy and the Beast movie rating: yellow light
A few instances of gorgeous and magical imagery cannot make up for the lack of genuine emotion or a fresh story. Strictly for devoted anime fans.
Emelie movie review: bad babysitter, under a glossy veneer
A slow-burn twist on the home-invasion story with a creepily classy atmosphere of dread and menace, but where it ends up is the stuff of hoary cliché.
London Has Fallen movie review: agitprop security theater
A Nuremberg rally for 21st-century America. Pure terror porn: racist, jingoistic, thoroughly obnoxious. Donald Trump voters will love it. *sob*
Where Are the Women? a visual breakdown of the 2016 Oscar nominees and winners
When it comes to winning a big award, it looks like representing women well — or at least not quite so badly as many films do — is a good move. [This post is not behind the paywall.]
