The Death of Stalin movie review: the great dictator
Audacious, outrageous, bleakly funny. Not since Charlie Chaplin sent up Hitler and invited us to laugh at terrible reality has there been a movie like this.
black comedy
American Made movie review: they’re quite bad fellas, in fact
Style and humor galore, and a hugely entertaining performance from Tom Cruise. But should a true story of immense governmental corruption be quite this fun?
Ingrid Goes West movie review: an antisocial-media story
Bitter, snide, and ultimately brutal, exactly the movie about social media we deserve; a satire that is barely satirical. Aubrey Plaza is hashtag savage.
Shin Godzilla (aka Godzilla Resurgence) movie review: big in Japan
Toho’s reboot of its most famous kaiju is, amidst intense monster action, a bitter satire on bureaucracy and a cautionary tale about humanity’s collective folly.
Wakefield movie review: man of the house (emeritus)
An appalling elevation of toxic masculinity to something poignant, radical, and heroic. As unpleasant and as passive-aggressive as its horrid protagonist.
Colossal movie review: becoming the monster
Wonderfully strange and weird and funny and dark and bitter. A deliciously geek-flavored metaphor for how damaged people heedlessly spread around their damage.
Free Fire movie review: guns a-boring
A 90-minute shootout that never makes us care who lives and who dies. In attempting to send up a cinematic cliché, this only becomes a tedious example of same.
The Belko Experiment movie review: team-killing exercise
A one-note scenario that never ups the ante on itself, and never even bothers to use its extreme situation to send up office politics or corporate policies.
T2 Trainspotting movie review: GenX running out of steam but chugging on
The sparse, cold satisfaction that could be wrung from Trainspotting’s punk insolence has been replaced by an exhausted cynicism. Which is exactly right.
Get Out movie review: yes all white people
Shattering and deep-down bone-chilling. A viciously unsettling nightmare of race and privilege that carves out a much-needed paradigm shift for genre film.
