Fighting with My Family movie review: real fake
Genuinely heartwarming, totally cheerworthy, bursting with warm and generous performances, and just a whole damn lotta fun. (And I hate professional wrestling.) Florence Pugh absolutely rocks it.
dramedy
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World movie review: dragon its feet to a blah finale
The gorgeous and once glorious fantasy series comes to a flat conclusion, one in which the stakes feel way lower than they should and the spark that once animated and elevated the story is missing.
Bumblebee movie review: floats like a butterfly…
Nostalgic yet not mindlessly retro, a heartfelt girl-and-her-alien-robot-car action-adventure dramedy that hits all the right notes. Hailee Steinfeld is terrific, and there’s nary a whiff of Michael Bay.
Welcome to Marwen movie review: toying with our sympathy
The plastic terror of The Polar Express melded with the kooky charm of Forrest Gump is a bad, sometimes outright icky, way to tell a tale of trauma and recovery, and does a disservice to Steve Carell’s sensitive performance.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse movie review: animation gets reanimated
Has a verve rare in big-budget movies at the moment. Fun and fresh and legitimately engages with its source material on the levels of story, visuals, and mythology all at once. It feels like discovering storytelling anew.
Dumplin’ movie review: throwing her weight around
A lovely movie that warmly embraces a wide(ish) range of girls-and-women-as-people, one that doesn’t reduce its large heroine — the amazing Danielle Macdonald — to nothing more than her size. This should not feel so damn radical, but it is.
Mirai movie review: and baby ruins everything
This tenderly animated Japanese film about sibling rivalry is lovely with its fantasy, but too convoluted for children and too slight for adults.
The Christmas Chronicles movie review: the Kurt Russell–as–Santa Claus movie you didn’t know you needed
Kurt Russell’s hot biker Santa is naughty and nice, but this otherwise discount holiday schmaltz is only half onboard with him.
Green Book movie review: a road frequently taken, but a lovely trip nevertheless (LFF 2018)
The tune may be familiar, but it is performed with virtuoso style, its central characters drawn with wit, charm, and complexity and brought to life via the absolutely gorgeous performances of its stars.
All About Nina movie review: a woman owning her anger
Hail Mary, full of rage. Mary Elizabeth Winstead is utterly incendiary in this own-worst-enemy dramedy that gender-flips a tired genre to give angry new voice to a woman speaking her own truths.
