Black Widow movie review: spy cruft
Dishearteningly less concerned with giving Natasha Romanoff her own story than with setting up her MCU replacement. Superfluous, backward-looking, its bit of feminism belabored. She deserved better.
Year: 2021
question of the weekend: what are movies for anymore?
The explosive growth of our entertainment options have fractured the pop-culture zeitgeist, and now it seems as if there is little distinction between movies and, say, TV shows. Do movies still stand apart?
Zola movie review: speed bumps in the road trip
A deliciously badass style — part 70s grindhouse, part verité pseudo-documentary — and all-in performances are undermined by an exploitive gaze, and a combination of failed caper and failed satire.
Charlatan movie review: more vegetative than herbal
An intriguing story with engaging performances about a compelling real-life character, but oddly inert, and can’t quite make all its many aspects gel into a wholly satisfying or wholly coherent story.
Les nôtres movie review: sacrificing girls for the greater good
Quietly chilling. A condemnation of supposed propriety over genuine decency, and the sacrifice of children to the illusion of communal cohesion. There are no easy answers here, and no pat resolutions.
Sweat movie review: let’s get metaphysical
Nuanced, sensitive peek into the world of a social-media influencer, with a beautiful central performance. Uncynical and pragmatic about the seachange human society has endured in the 21st century.
In the Heights movie review: hot in the city
Pure joy. It is singing and dancing, life and love, food and family, heritage and community in all its complexity. Harnesses Golden Age Hollywood verve and style in breathtaking, enrapturing ways.
curated: “in defence of historical inaccuracy,” particularly re colorblind casting
If you’re okay with certain ambiguities and artistic licenses in historical depictions but not others, maybe take a look at which ones bother you. Why are some facts more acceptably malleable than others, and what value do you find in which bendings of the “truth”?
The Reason I Jump documentary review: the experience of being autistic
An extraordinary cinematic experience that immerses us into the personal landscapes of profoundly autistic, nonverbal young people. The empathy it engenders is deeply felt and enormously eye-opening.
Rise Again: Tulsa and the Red Summer and A Crime on the Bayou documentaries review: Black history matters
Two new documentaries — one a shrewdly incisive work of journalism, the other a delicately elegant tale of injustice and friendship — tell all-but-forgotten histories of Black America. Of America.
