Midnight Sun movie review: Cupid’s shot in the dark
Ah, it’s another “teen falling in love while dying beautifully” romance. When it isn’t sappy and predictable, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Its young couple is perfectly charming, though.
coming of age
The Lodgers movie review: home is where the haunting is
Cursed twins who speak in faux-byronic enigmas, a crumbling manse full of dead birds and velvet drapes, and strained psychosexual nonsense. There’s nothing eerie here, just the puerile and misjudged.
Call Me by Your Name movie review: met a boy cute as can be…
You can feel the stillness and the heat of this sultry, sensual summer in Italy. This is a glorious romance about falling in love with life itself, and living with gusto.
I, Tonya movie review: a woman at war with herself
A black comedy about domestic violence, parental abuse, and low self-esteem (and it works!), one that challenges our appreciation of how true based-on-fact might be.
Lady Bird movie review: flights of adolescent angsty (LFF 2017)
An emotional feast full of humor and pathos about the audacity, the wonder, the horror that is female adolescence. Beautiful, bittersweet, and very generous.
#Raindance2017: Black Hollow Cage, Stuck, Mukoku
Quick takes from the 25th Raindance Film Festival, with public screenings in London through October 1st, 2017.
My Pure Land movie review: meet a real-life heroine in a land that really doesn’t want her
Behold a modern-day feminist western set in deeply patriarchal Pakistan. Stark and spare, with a heroine full of mean grace, it’s even a true story.
It movie review: a series of unfortunate events
The Goonies, Stand by Me, and Poltergeist went into a blender with a pinch of E.T. and John Hughes to smush into a mess of retro 80s mush.
Step documentary review: dance into the future
Covers ground — the lives of black teen girls — that mostly goes unexamined onscreen. It couldn’t be fresher or more important. It’s also wildly entertaining.
Landline movie review: love in the time before smartphones
A charming delight in a retro timeslip. Gillian Robespierre and Jenny Slate continue their rampage of creating wonderfully, memorably flawed women onscreen.
