Lucky Grandma movie review: brittle old lady
Wild sass, gentle comedy, shivs of poignancy, and instantly vivid characters add up to a wonderful riff on mob movies as a Chinatown granny faces off against gangsters. Tsai Chin is an absolute hoot.
dramedy
How to Build a Girl movie review: instruction manual not included
The hypocrisy of the world’s expectations of girls gets a gently sardonic knock via an audaciously confident young woman battling to be herself. This is a lovely, goofy movie, easygoing and chaotic.
Bad Education movie review: school for scandal
A laugh-until-you-cry dramedy burlesque, brilliantly structured and horrifically compelling, about the endless grift that passes for an economy in America. Hugh Jackman is at the peak of his powers.
Trolls: World Tour movie review: a cinematic Rubicon by dint of pandemic coincidence
As pastel and glittery as its predecessor, with a silliness more glorious and less forced. Sweet, smart, sincere… but it doesn’t deserve to be carrying the future of movies on its little shoulders.
Saint Frances movie review: there will be blood — deal with it
Taboo-busting laugh-until-you-cry tale dares to speak of oft-unspoken matters of women’s lives. So very necessary to open up the range of women’s experiences seen as baseline. I love this movie.
Military Wives movie review: tired choir dramedy needs to change the tune
So aggressively precisely what you think it is that there’s almost no point in seeing it. Flattens a true story into generic pap that isn’t even that successfully, authentically feel-good, either.
Onward movie review: the Pixar road goes ever on
Don’t let the Pixar curve throw you: familiar this quest may be, but it’s full of magic and wonder and humor and melancholy, and set in a fully realized fantasy world. Not a masterpiece but very good.
The Call of the Wild movie review: a very good boi (mostly)
An old-fashioned kiddie adventure, sweetly earnest, equal parts scary, funny, exciting, sad, and happy, with only a bit of uncanny valley in its CGI doggo star. Definitely had something in my eye.
Emma. movie review: this queen bee has a bitter sting
A sly, penetrating zing and a frisson of Insta-influencer horror — of the oppression of performative perfection against a marzipan backdrop — renders Austen’s fluff and nonsense deadly serious.
Olympic Dreams movie review: coming in from the emotional cold
Guerilla filmmaking is at its most charming in this melancholy romance set — and improvised and shot on the fly — in the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympic Village. Delightful and delicately observed.
