The Many Saints of Newark movie review: far from heaven
The performances are terrific, the evocation of the period striking, but it feels redundant, more GoodFellas-lite than The Sopranos, and with several TV seasons’ worth of story crammed in.
crime
Reminiscence movie review: remembering it for you retail
A cautionary tale about getting mired in the past is itself hamstrung by what has come before: overplayed noir tropes and underbaked sci-fi ideas. The fab cast at least elevates this to the mediocre.
Naked Singularity movie review: New York misery
A very good cast makes a valiant go of it, but a hugely ambitious experimental novel has been boiled down to a tepid mishmash of genres: social-justice drama + black-comedy heist + sci-fi mind-bender.
Riders of Justice and Pig movies review: rethinking the revenge movie
Two brilliant dramas upend cinematic tropes of male vengeance with precision, patience, and grim humor. These are radical rethinks in emotional maturity surrounding men’s grief, remorse, and shame.
Peter Rabbit 2 (aka Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway) movie review: carrot and shtick
Cynical sequel — you know, for kids! — doubles down on the nihilistic money-grubbing of the original. Thinks that being clever and meta about its own disenchantment will win us over. It does not.
Zola movie review: speed bumps in the road trip
A deliciously badass style — part 70s grindhouse, part verité pseudo-documentary — and all-in performances are undermined by an exploitive gaze, and a combination of failed caper and failed satire.
Rise Again: Tulsa and the Red Summer and A Crime on the Bayou documentaries review: Black history matters
Two new documentaries — one a shrewdly incisive work of journalism, the other a delicately elegant tale of injustice and friendship — tell all-but-forgotten histories of Black America. Of America.
The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard movie review: kill me quickly…
A movie to turn you off Going To The Movies, just as we are allowed to again, with its unlikeable characters, muddled action, and incomprehensible plot, all of which are magnified on the big screen.
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It review: possessed innocent?
As credulous — or con-artist cheaty — as its demon-hunter protagonists, but lacking their charm. Worse, it can’t even be bothered to justify and satisfy the procedural approach to its mystery.
Locked Down movie review: criminally awful
Ejiofor and Hathaway are game, but they’re grasping for something solid, and don’t find it. A deeply unsatisfying novelty artifact of the pandemic that fails to create a necessary sense of transgression.
