Tolkien movie review: it doesn’t wander, but it’s lost
This infuriatingly reductive biopic of the Hobbit author renders him as stolid and dull, and removes all the mystery and the wonder from creative inspiration. Literal-minded and free of magic.
biography
Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché documentary review: the movie pioneer you’ve never heard of
Not only a portrait of the woman who made more than a thousand of the very first films, but a mystery detective story about how the achievements of a trailblazing woman were erased, and found again.
Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. documentary review: the multiple identities of a modern artist
A tremendous backgrounder, intimate and personal, on the massively popular — and massively political — hip-hop artist. Here is the source of all her anger and passion, and here is why she needs to be heard.
Jane Fonda in Five Acts documentary review: the political is her personal
An extraordinarily intimate and perceptive new biography of the legendary actor and activist. Fonda reveals insecurities and anxieties that are achingly raw and very personal, but which many women will see themselves in.
Whitney documentary review: an 80s icon contemplated, venerated, mourned
Deeply moving, truly tragic; a biography with a keenly journalistic but hugely sympathetic eye. Powerful compassion and a get-up-and-dance deployment of Houston’s music may well bring her a new generation of fans.
Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist documentary review: counterculture’s wise elder woman
There’s nothing fawning and plenty ironic about this essential first documentary to cover a major female fashion designer, a woman whose life is almost a perfect reflection of the trajectory of 20th-century feminism.
McQueen documentary review: the tragedy of the fashion provocateur
There’s so much fresh air in this stunningly good biography that it feels like you’ve never encountered a rags-to-riches, tortured-artist story before. Not just for fashion lovers.
RBG documentary review: though she be but little she is fierce
A marvelous, funny, deeply moving biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg from her rise as a legal champion of women’s rights in the 1970s to her ascension as a Supreme Court justice and social-media hero “Notorious RBG.”
Funny Cow movie review: standing up for herself
This is scorched-earth cinema that challenges us to find moments of grace and triumph among misery, cruelty, and emotional frugality. Maxine Peake is absolutely incendiary.
The 15:17 to Paris movie review: hell on wheels
Clint Eastwood turns a terrorist attack into a bit of post-hoc reality “entertainment” with the stunt casting of the actual heroes as themselves in a stilted, tone-deaf piece of Christian-American propaganda.
