OFCS 2017 awards winners announced
Get Out wins Best Film and Best Original Screenplay. Call Me by Your Name, Dunkirk, and Three Billboards also take two awards each.
Bright movie review: every little thing it does is the opposite of magic
Trolls the viewer and condescends to genre fans. A smirking, tone-deaf parable about racism that is itself racist, including about its made-up orcs and elves.
Pitch Perfect 3 movie review: pitch, please…
The slim charms of the previous movies have been tossed away in favor of cringe-inducing cattiness and a ridiculous plot. There’s barely even any music. Aca-palling.
Downsizing movie review: let’s get small (LFF 2017)
Absolutely stupendous: smart, funny, poignant, a true original. A thrilling odyssey of ideas that takes its sci-fi concept to the very edges of extrapolation.
I’m on BBC Radio 4’s “Front Row” this Friday, December 22nd
My reach into the BBC is expanding!
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle movie review: jungle feeble
Culturally clueless cinematic vomit, a cynical undertaking embracing the most diminishing clichés it can apply to its characters. Low stakes, and low humor.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi movie review: a great disturbance in the Force
Upends expectations, demythologizes the mythos, and takes an iconic series in a bold new direction with a story full of humor, courage, and dazzling imagery.
Mountain documentary review: the philosophy of peak adventure
Dizzying and dazzling, this is a stirring meditation on the allure, the mystery, and the danger of the world’s highest summits, as places but also as ideas.
The Unseen (aka Amaurosis) movie review: when the see it/skip it recommendation is right in the title
A portrait of grief and guilt that’s only mildly engaging, until it morphs into a wannabe psychological thriller and turns limp, laughable, and just plain icky.
I, Tonya movie review: a woman at war with herself
A black comedy about domestic violence, parental abuse, and low self-esteem (and it works!), one that challenges our appreciation of how true based-on-fact might be.
