Hustlers movie review: with hearts of steel
GoodFellas, except they’re gals. A cinematic bonbon of delinquent deliciousness that easily wraps us up in charmed complicity. And the exquisite lack of a male gaze means it’s never salacious.
black comedy
Good Boys movie review: the razor edge of innocence
Much more sweet than raunchy, and surprisingly innocent. Genuinely kind to its young protagonists as they try to navigate a culture that doesn’t much care to protect them from growing up too soon.
In Fabric movie review: retail shock therapy
A murderous dress and creepy shop clerks add up to nothing more than exhausting nonsense full of fetishizing of women and weirdness for weird’s sake alone. Consumerism is killing us, or something.
Hail Satan? documentary review: the devil you say
Hilarious, provocative look at the wonderfully profane rebels of the culture wars who, with tongue in cheek but seriously, too, are trolling fundie-Christian America with their delicious blasphemies.
Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts 2019 (91st Academy Awards) review
My pick: The animated short of the year surely must be Domee Shi’s “Bao,” a bittersweet reverie on motherhood that features one of the most hilariously shocking moments onscreen this year.
Cold Pursuit movie review: hot mess
The latest Liam Neeson revenge fantasy simply makes no sense even before you get to the tedious action, undeveloped characters, and stubborn racism and sexism. A rancid excuse for a thriller.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse movie review: animation gets reanimated
Has a verve rare in big-budget movies at the moment. Fun and fresh and legitimately engages with its source material on the levels of story, visuals, and mythology all at once. It feels like discovering storytelling anew.
Anna and the Apocalypse movie review: it shuffles along like the undead
A zombie musical comedy set at Christmas should be a can’t-miss. But this one isn’t scary or funny; its characters are one-note, and the whole shebang — blah songs included — is emotionally flat.
Dead in a Week (Or Your Money Back) movie review: the dying isn’t easy (but the comedy is)
This unexpectedly gentle black comedy about depression and suicide gets the tone just right, and could prompt as many empathetic conversations as it does compassionate laughs.
Slaughterhouse Rulez movie review: no, it doesn’t
This unfunny, unscary mess is a series of missed opportunities that has no idea what to do with its attempted class-warfare satire. It’s cheap but not even cheesy: that would require some passion, which is completely lacking.
