Finding Emily movie review: call waiting
A smart, funny switched-up Cinderella for the social-media era with lots to say about modern dating and gender relations that is caustic, optimistic, and exasperated all at once. Instant comfort movie.
comedy
Paddington in Peru movie review: bad things happen when you leave the city
Colorful but flattened and flimsy, which really grates next to how abundantly, uniquely original the first two movies are. Suffers greatly from the lack of their deft whimsy. It’s, well, bearly there.
Nightbitch movie review: live, bark, love
Replaces the novel’s rage with gentle comedy, biting its tongue and undercutting its protagonist. Still, mundane truths about women’s realities that rarely get public airings are on welcome display.
Red One movie review: a very copaganda Christmas
Unfunny action comedy can’t even pull off sloppy Yuletide kitsch. The anti-chemistry among its likable stars is “bested” only by the ugly CGI. Have some light festive violence — you know, for kids!
The Fall Guy movie review: stunt dribble
This mess isn’t as clever as it thinks it is, and wastes the small charms of the delicious chemistry between Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt. Feels like they shot a dashed-off first draft of the script.
Argylle movie review: just *argh*
A vacuous multitentacled exercise in pop-culture marketing, and a crass, confused, charmless showcase for Matthew Vaughn’s goes-to-11 hyperactive “style” of unconvincing CGI and frenetic fight scenes.
Trolls Band Together movie review: cheerful kindness, weirdified
There is gentle nonstop chaos in the trippy candy-colored assault. Genuinely good-natured, sweet without being sappy, more strange (in a good way) than kids’ movies usually are, and hard to dislike.
Renfield movie review: it mostly sucks
Nicholas Hoult is lovely. Hammy Nicolas Cage is amusing. But everyone in this movie is in a different movie; the tonal mismatches are baffling. Was it the first draft of this script that was greenlit?
Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves movie review: dudgeon and draggin’
A high-fantasy action comedy of tedious slapstick and obvious punchlines you scry the instant a wannabe medieval wag opens their mouth. It’s all borderline incoherent, sketched in cheap-looking CGI.
Wild Men (Vildmænd) movie review: mild men, more like
This Danish black comedy is a meandering exploration of masculinity in the 21st century, and though it’s more miss than hit, it’s charming and bittersweetly heartfelt in its bumbling and bungling.
