On the Road (review)

If you didn’t know that Jack Kerouac’s novel was a seminal influence on postwar America, you would never, ever guess it from this lifeless, soulless, pointless adaptation.

Argo (London Film Festival review)

I was literally in tears for parts of Argo, a purely physical reaction, not an emotional one, to deal with the tension. The only other option would have been to moan out loud, the film is almost that unbearably nerve-wracking.

Anna Karenina (review)

There is no pretense that we’re getting a realistic depiction of late-19th-century Russia. Director Joe Wright isn’t merely crafting a metaphor about the social structures under which we all live: he’s underscoring the artificiality of cinema itself.

Lawless (review)

An outsider’s look at a unique moment in American history, the gigantic failed social experiment of Prohibition: withering yet hugely engaging and ringing with unspoken critical parallels with today’s “war on drugs.”