Daddy’s Home 2 movie review: the father away, the better
Goes well beyond the typical mindless array of slapstick and humiliation to reach disgusting new depths of coarseness. Not just appalling, but actually dangerous.
Christmas/holiday
The Man Who Invented Christmas movie review: but would Charles Dickens approve?
There’s charm and wit in its fanciful depiction of the creative process, but the film downplays the social activism that Dickens fully embraced in his work.
A Bad Moms Christmas movie review: cruel coal in the stocking
This rushed sequel is an insult to its progenitor movie. A cheap knockoff that doesn’t understand what made Bad Moms so smart, funny, and feminist-wise.
Collateral Beauty movie review: there is no beauty in this
Appalling and sadistic. How can anyone who is not a sociopath look at this horrible attempt at feel-good fantasy and say, “This is fine, this is healthy”?
Office Christmas Party movie review: messtivities
Hangover lite, with even more tepid notions of what constitutes debauchery, plus a true dedication to strained contrivance.
Bad Santa 2 movie review: been there, done that, licked the candy cane lasciviously
Hard to believe it took 13 years to get a sequel to our screens and still have it show not a hint of Bad Santa’s inspiration or subversion.
Carol movie review: flung out of space
Flawless in every way: sumptuous visually and emotionally. One of the more mature and sophisticated romances the big screen has ever seen.
The Night Before movie review: twas the bromance before Christmas
It’s bogged down by too many derailing tangents, but the three appealing leads have a wonderful chemistry, and it gets close to the spirit of the season.
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.
Christmas with the Coopers (aka Love the Coopers) movie review: familial torture
Glossy Hollywood automatons sleepwalk through family dynamics full of forced quirkiness, excruciating cuteness, and phony emotion. Absolutely cringeworthy.
