Welcome to Happiness movie review: leave it in the closet
Its self-conscious eccentricity is so banal that it feels like a parody of “the American indie.” Behold magic rocks and a Significant fortune cookie!
dramedy
The Family Fang movie review: family bites
Strikingly original, a truly rare pleasure in a cinematic environment clogged with cookie-cutter films. Jason Bateman and Nicole Kidman are splendid.
Florence Foster Jenkins movie review: don’t worry that it’s not good enough for anyone else to hear
When FFJ sticks to farce, it works wonderfully, like something P.G. Wodehouse might have loved. But the longer it goes on, the more maudlin it gets.
The Jungle Book movie review: welcome to the jungle
Goes right up to the bleeding edge of cinema to tell a story that is strapping yet simple, and hugely appealing. Disney found a good reason to redo an old film.
Black Mountain Poets movie review: rhyme and unreason
A tasty treat of gentle but wise humor, full of as much sympathy but also tough love for its messed-up sisters as they are for each other.
Marguerite movie review: is ignorance bliss?
A bravura dramedy that beautifully balances tragedy and comedy and asks a tricky question: Is it better to be cynical about art, or happily undiscriminating?
Eddie the Eagle movie review: white man can’t jump, much
Yet another celebration of an overconfident mediocre white man as charming, heroic, and worthy of emulation. It’s inspirational!
Grandma movie review: the wisdoms of age and youth
Wonderfully, aggressively feminist, a rare crossgenerational portrait of two women getting to know each other amidst a crisis. Smart and acerbically funny.
The D Train (aka Bad Bromance) movie review: when idiot men can do no wrong
Woefully bad feint at a dramedy in which everyone agrees the “hero” is a terrible excuse for a man… and he gets the message that he is awesome anyway.
Aloha movie review: hello, and good-bye
A mess of a romantic dramedy full of colonialistic offensiveness, forced quirkiness, implausible emotion, and oblivious masculine self-centeredness.
