Get on Up movie review: James Brown’s bad self
Solid biopic of the godfather of funk and soul, but there’s not much genuinely memorable about it beyond Chadwick Boseman’s stunning breakout performance.
historical
The Imitation Game movie review: decoding Alan Turing
A marvelous combination of thrilling intellectual adventure and sensitive portrait of a man ahead of his time both personally and professionally.
Mr. Turner movie review: in the concrete abstract
This is no stuffy costume drama but a richly lived-in visit to early-19th-century England that is rough, bawdy, often funny, and more often unsettling.
Serena movie review: logging for pulp
What starts out as solid romantic melodrama — almost Golden Age of Hollywood stuff — gets so crazy so fast in so many ways.
Fury movie review (London Film Festival)
A particularly ugly iteration of “war is hell”… and I mean that as a compliment. This is a film that is deeply unpleasant and near genius.
’71 movie review (London Film Festival)
Remember this name: Jack O’Connell. He is magnificent in one of the most remarkable portraits of soldiering in recent memory.
Dracula Untold movie review: it doesn’t suck
A solid action fantasy more elemental and visceral than I expected, thanks to the potent presence of Luke Evans.
Annabelle movie review: everything that is wrong with movies today
A yawningly empty movie, the epitome of brainless, heartless, soulless, shameless cash-grab corporate filmmaking.
The Dead Lands movie review (London Film Festival)
A tediously clichéd, overblown, badly acted action flick full of bloody movie violence dressed up in Maori drag.
A Walk Among the Tombstones movie review: only mostly dead
Liam Neeson’s good performance only just elevates the general seen-it-before-ness, including a risible appropriation of women’s pain for men’s redemption.
