#Like movie review: teen feminist rage, muted
Sarah Pirozek weaves an elegant, noirish tragedy on a micro budget, but it’s far more effective as a portrait of the miserable discomposure of modern teen life than as a feminist vigilante thriller.
film noir
Blow the Man Down movie review: redefining the femme fatale
Quietly savage, weirdly funny, this feminist take on crime noir is ferocious in a way that only slowly reveals itself. Conflict and compassion wax and wane in a mystery that isn’t quite what it seems.
John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum movie review: symphony in order and chaos
Modern noir god Keanu Reeves again stalks a fantasy(ish) world of exhausting, inventive violence. But this time, the curtain is drawn back on the sham of seeming orderliness in its world (and ours).
Pokémon: Detective Pikachu movie review: destined to be Legendary
Designed to cash in on the popular mobile game, this kiddie noir nevertheless sparkles with charming originality. Gentle enough for tykes but with satirical bite for grownups, too. Downright adorable.
Out of Blue movie review: murder most muted
A limp noodle of a cinematic noir that drains Patricia Clarkson of her usual eccentric charisma. And where it aims for intriguingly oblique pseudoscientific philosophizing, it ends up merely obtuse.
Serenity movie review: gonna need a bigger nope
Accidental hilarity turns ugly in this baffling exercise in genre-hopping that thinks it justifies its Hollywood-typical adolescent-boy attitudes about women, sex, violence, and morality. It does not.
Destroyer movie review: holding out for an antiheroine
Nicole Kidman’s pitiless performance completely upends genre expectations in Karyn Kusama’s tense, grim crime noir. Uncompromising and subtly challenging, like a cerebral itch you can’t quite scratch.
Bad Times at the El Royale movie review: bad times indeed
A self-indulgent, faux-woke mashup of noir crime, black comedy, and Tarantino-esque ultraviolence. Some great performances, including a spectacular feature debut from Cynthia Erivo; shame they’re so wasted.
The Happytime Murders movie review: schlock puppets
Ugly, sordid, and proud of it, with less than no justification. “Meet the Feebles meets Who Framed Roger Rabbit” conveys a far greater sense of dignity, cohesion, and purpose than this witness movie deserves.
Anon movie review: brings a whole new meaning to ‘private eye’
This sci-fi riff on the end of privacy is not as provocative as it would like to be, and its mystery completely falls apart in the end. But its visual worldbuilding is fascinating.
