Out of Blue movie review: murder most muted
A limp noodle of a cinematic noir that drains Patricia Clarkson of her usual eccentric charisma. And where it aims for intriguingly oblique pseudoscientific philosophizing, it ends up merely obtuse.
directed by women
The Crossing (Guo Chun Tian) movie review: smuggler’s blahs
This uninvolving coming-of-age crime drama tries to dazzle with visual tricksiness, but it cannot make up for its teen protagonist who is mere metaphorical symbol, and a bystander in her own story.
The Fight movie review: a woman’s struggle is real…
Actor Jessica Hynes makes an astonishing directorial debut with this disconcerting little movie about women’s everyday anger and resentment, and the absolute battle just to get through the day.
Children of the Snow Land documentary review: an epic journey… to and from school
An unexpected, beautiful movie about the character and mettle it takes just to go to school when you come from one of the poorest and most remote places on the planet. A profoundly moving journey.
Captain Marvel movie review: superpowered female SJW invites manbaby nerds to suck it
An indie ethos comes to the comic-book movie, upending the origin story and offering a female superhero who throws out the boys’ rule book, goes her own way, and stalks among us with easy confidence.
Capernaum movie review: a child’s real-life horror
Harrowing and heartbreaking, a nightmare dystopia that could almost be a documentary. This tough but essential film slyly asks us to consider what we owe children, not just our own but the world’s.
Nina movie review: dreary would-be sexual melodrama
Overlong and underwritten, tepid and dreary, this would-be sexual melodrama isn’t lurid enough to qualify as soft-core porn, but never finds any true emotion among its triangle of lovers, either.
Destroyer movie review: holding out for an antiheroine
Nicole Kidman’s pitiless performance completely upends genre expectations in Karyn Kusama’s tense, grim crime noir. Uncompromising and subtly challenging, like a cerebral itch you can’t quite scratch.
On the Basis of Sex movie review: Notorious RBG’s origin story
Coasts on the awesomeness of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a way unadventurous if solidly crowd-pleasing. But the depiction of her incredibly supportive marriage to a feminist man is intensely satisfying.
Mary Queen of Scots movie review: not so good to be the queen…
Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie command the screen in this delicious anti costume drama with an earthy ethos, replete with movie-movie internecine spycraft and a sly, smart feminist parable that resonates for us today.
