The Purge: Election Year movie review: soylent green is Donald Trump!
A few hints of stagnation aside, this franchise remains a terrifyingly trenchant dystopia. A brutal vision of an America not far removed from our own.
drama
The Intervention and There Is a New World Somewhere movies review: women on the verge
Two movies about women at crossroads in their lives explore the sort of personal crisis — lost mojo! — typically reserved for men onscreen.
The Childhood of a Leader movie review: the history of the world, part Europe
Cinematic wankery at its most puerile. Two hours of the sun setting revealing that this is why it gets dark at night would not have been more pointless.
Black movie review: tragically bad
A facile riff on Romeo & Juliet amongst Brussels gangs. Banal, clichéd, and treats its teenage-girl protagonist in a spectacularly disgusting way.
classic film through a feminist lens: Baby Face (1933)
It’s easy to see an anti-feminist “Just look what happens to women who break the rules” underneath what is most obviously simply straight-up salaciousness.
The Legend of Tarzan and Free State of Jones movies review: enough with the white saviors
Filtering other people’s stories through the eyes of white men is tedious and offensive, and it feels like a desperate hedge against fresh perspectives.
Into the Forest movie review: end of the world, not as we’ve known it
An atypical disaster movie, less about the failure of technology than the failure — and perhaps the resurgence — of the human spirit in the face of that.
Disorder (aka Maryland) movie review: security blank
Moments of genuine tension are few in this would-be suspenseful thriller, which can’t settle on a state of mind for its protagonist, or for its own story.
Our Kind of Traitor movie review: ordinary everyday spies
Smartly elegant; the fantastic cast makes it worth your time. But it does feel as if it belongs on the small screen spread across six or eight hours.
Parched movie review: women finding water in a desert of men’s making
Beautifully photographed, sometimes brutal, ultimately uplifting: a lively and amusing journey of four women pushing back against India’s patriarchy.
