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?
crime
How to Blow Up a Pipeline movie review: it means the earth to them
A heist drama, incendiary and intense, with planetary stakes. These young people are desperate, with nothing to lose, and everyone older than them made them this way. Nihilism is their only optimism.
Black Mail movie review: no reason to give in to it
Limp thriller is both overly earnest and naively preposterous. A mess of retro ideas about marriage and men, with a protagonist who lacks agency. There’s no suspense but plenty of misplaced moralizing.
Bullet Train movie review: total derailment
The cast is, on paper, terrific, but there’s nothing engaging in their bloody savagery. A misfire of a supposed action comedy, this mind-numbing mess is by turns grating, tedious, and infuriating.
Navalny documentary review: celebrating the biggest pain in Putin’s ass
Spectacularly entertaining. As gripping, as suspenseful as a finely wrought fictional thriller; a sheer delight as a portrait of the man himself. Films don’t get much more daring or crucial than this.
The Bad Guys movie review: criminally fun
A snappy, snarky, never-ever sentimental concoction of cartoon chaos meets hip heist flick. Its breezy swagger extends to the delightful animation, organic and mellow, hot and cool at the same time.
Ambulance movie review: dead on arrival
A screaming deluge of metal and rubber devoid of drama, suspense, and elegance. Instead it’s random vehicular chaos enacted with the same energy of a four-year-old smashing his toys into one another.
The Batman movie review: to bat, or not to bat
No snark, no spandex pantomime spectacle. Just noir mystery, Pattinson’s sad recluse a detective in a cesspit of corruption. Relentlessly grim, all darkness and despair, not escapist but of our time.
Death on the Nile movie review: Kenneth Branagh steps in the same river twice
This should be salacious! We should revel in the seething jealousy and simmering resentments! But there’s not much suspense or engagement in waiting for someone to die, nor in finding out whodunnit.
Blacklight movie review: turn it off
Feels less like a movie than it does a hostage video. Poor Liam Neeson isn’t trying to hide how exhausted and trapped he is in his cinematic hamster wheel of cheap, violent revenge thrillers. It’s sad.
