Argylle movie review: just *argh*
A vacuous multitentacled exercise in pop-culture marketing, and a crass, confused, charmless showcase for Matthew Vaughn’s goes-to-11 hyperactive “style” of unconvincing CGI and frenetic fight scenes.
female protagonist
I.S.S. movie review: burns up on reentry
It looks amazing and the cast is fab, but while this could-happen-tomorrow story wants to appropriate the magic of science fiction, it fails to think imaginatively about longstanding human problems.
Maestro movie review: changing the tune, masterfully (London Film Festival 2023)
Oh, frabjous film! Bradley Cooper’s astonishing high-wire act feels classic and modern at the same time: immersive and impressionistic, breathtakingly bold. A kick in the pants to mainstream cinema.
Godzilla Minus One movie review: the horrors of the past, reconsidered
The king of all monsters gets a period-piece reboot, and it’s the closest the series has gotten since to the sincere, unironic horrors of the 1954 original. No comfy escape from terrible reality here.
Trolls Band Together movie review: cheerful kindness, weirdified
There is gentle nonstop chaos in the trippy candy-colored assault. Genuinely good-natured, sweet without being sappy, more strange (in a good way) than kids’ movies usually are, and hard to dislike.
Killers of the Flower Moon movie review: blood for oil (London Film Festival 2023)
A great American filmmaker on a memory-holed chapter of American history at the intersection of colonialism and toxic masculinity. Massive, epic, and essential. Scorches the earth of our complacency.
Foe movie review: scenes from an apocalyptic marriage (London Film Festival 2023)
The young cast is mesmerizing, but all this dusty dystopia has is vibes and vague metaphors. It only just barely touches on the potential of its science-fiction ideas to explore the human condition.
Cat Person movie review: her too
The cringe of modern relationships stinks up this antiromance. Its bald truths, all but ignored in pop culture, about how women navigate romantic and sexual relationships with men, demand to be heard.
My Animal movie review: out of the wilderness (and into a bigger one)
A mysterious, mournful film about proscribed teenaged-girlhood and feral female sexuality. There’s nothing entirely original here, but what it has to say, it says with enormous confidence and panache.
The Dive movie review: don’t hold your breath
Intermittent moments of fleeting suspense punctuate literal and figurative murkiness (I gave up trying to figure out what was going on) as it flails around trying to pad itself out to feature length.
