
Tesla movie review: less than electrifying
Hawke is warm and empathetic, but the film’s artificiality is at odds with a celebration of the visionary’s life and work, and finally offputting. I wish this were either more earnest or more bonkers.
handcrafted film criticism by maryann johanson | since 1997
Hawke is warm and empathetic, but the film’s artificiality is at odds with a celebration of the visionary’s life and work, and finally offputting. I wish this were either more earnest or more bonkers.
Rosamund Pike is perfection in this intellectual romance, an unsentimental portrait of a woman striving to be appreciated for her mind at a time even more anti-woman than today. Feminist and flinty.
The hypocrisy of the world’s expectations of girls gets a gently sardonic knock via an audaciously confident young woman battling to be herself. This is a lovely, goofy movie, easygoing and chaotic.
A laugh-until-you-cry dramedy burlesque, brilliantly structured and horrifically compelling, about the endless grift that passes for an economy in America. Hugh Jackman is at the peak of his powers.
Revisionist tale of the Australian folk hero rages against the dark forces that shaped him: emotional and economic neglect and abuse forged in patriarchy and colonialism. Electrifyingly punk and vulgar.
Messy, furious, sometimes at odds with itself, this tale of documenting a powerful man’s sexual intimidation of a vulnerable woman is absolutely necessary, full of a rage that is absolutely vital.
This profoundly empathetic tale of an unlikely spiritual leader is a condemnation of the dogmatism and narrowmindedness of the Catholic Church and a provocative exploration of guilt and redemption.
Based-on-fact drama puts the focus where it rarely is onscreen: on women who are victims of male violence. Yet a terrific central performance and an abundance of empathy cannot overcome its clichés.
So aggressively precisely what you think it is that there’s almost no point in seeing it. Flattens a true story into generic pap that isn’t even that successfully, authentically feel-good, either.
If you like these sorts of movies, you’ll like this one, a solid SJW drama out to condemn, with plenty of evidence, profit-above-all capitalism that embraces willful negligence and corruption.