A Fantastic Woman movie review: the horror of grief denied
A quiet yet resolute portrait of bravery and resilience in the face of unconscionable bigotry, and distressingly moving. Specific yet universal, and wonderfully human.
drama
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.
The Cured movie review: land of the living undead
A slow, mild exploration of guilt, grief, bigotry, and militant sectarianism, all in the context of a treatment for a zombie virus. Tepid and frustratingly underdeveloped, with few surprises.
November movie review: the woods are just trees, the trees are just wood
An all-style and very-little-substance exercise in random oddity and weird imagery. Dispenses with engaging characters and revels in its own meaninglessness as if emptiness were deep and significant.
The Boy Downstairs movie review: the ex factor
An appealing high concept that could have gone in many wildly different directions, all emotionally charged, instead wallows in a wan, bloodless banality of “chill.”
Black Panther movie review: absolute Marvel
Classic comic-book stuff made fresh by drawing on underexplored mythologies and cultures, yet still deeply resonant and deeply universal. An exhilarating pulp-fiction dream that ups the ante on the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The 15:17 to Paris movie review: hell on wheels
Clint Eastwood turns a terrorist attack into a bit of post-hoc reality “entertainment” with the stunt casting of the actual heroes as themselves in a stilted, tone-deaf piece of Christian-American propaganda.
Fifty Shades Freed movie review: no shades of gray
My Fifty Shades of Grey fantasy: Anastasia Steele gets a restraining order against Christian Grey, writes a tell-all book about him, and becomes a #MeToo/#TimesUp heroine. Mmm, sexy.
The Mercy movie review: a sea of troubles
An unsettling true story smartly told, from a moment in time at once uniquely its own and a harbinger of things to come. Colin Firth is subtle, unflinching, extraordinary.
Journey’s End movie review: where the war winds blow
A descent into the muddy trenches of World War I that is intimate and immediate, melancholy and profoundly moving. An experience as visceral as it is intellectual.
