
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.
handcrafted film criticism by maryann johanson | since 1997
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.