Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts (88th Academy Awards) review
The wonderfully weird, hilariously morbid “World of Tomorrow” crams in more disturbing, sinister science-fiction ideas than a decade’s worth of blockbusters.
black comedy
Our Brand Is Crisis movie review: unearned (and unneeded) sentiment
A protagonist who revels in the sheer cynicism of her job gets a sentimental redemption out of nowhere; Sandra Bullock’s comedic chops are undercut by it.
Lost in Karastan movie review: lost indeed
Snarky humor and a wonderfully put-upon Matthew Macfadyen are the best reasons to see a satire that ultimately seems to forget where it was heading.
A Perfect Day movie review: war is hellacious
This compact little satire — set in 1990s Balkans — is a small, personal story about huge unfairnesses and injustices. Bleakly, bitterly, blackly funny.
The Hateful Eight movie review: all hat, no cattle
Inexcusably self-indulgent. Tarantino gratifies his enormous self-love and his amusement at his own genius at the expense of all else.
The Big Short movie review: first thing we do, let’s kill all the bankers
An infuriating yet entertaining look at the “other guys” of the 2008 financial crash. You will want to weep. While you’re laughing! *sob*
Krampus movie review: holiday horror
There’s no mythological weight behind this flick’s anti-Santa. This is more like a standard slasher horror, its baddie on a rampage of arbitrary carnage.
The Dressmaker movie review: haute couture as a tragicomic weapon
So entertaining, so unexpected, so wonderfully oddball, so damn good. Witty genre-busting simmering with pathos, humor, and calamity.
High-Rise movie review: afterscape in the sky (LFF 2015)
Ben Wheatley takes on J.G. Ballard, and it’s a frustrating experience: visually striking but far too literal while aiming for the allegorical.
Tales of Halloween movie review: buckets of blood, and lots of laughs
The best of the bunch in this anthology of vaguely interconnected shorts are the outrageous and uproarious genre pastiches “Friday the 31st” and “Bad Seed.”
