#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.
horror
#Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump documentary review: science backs up the horror we can all plainly see
Mental-health professionals, bound by ethics to point out danger, discuss how President Donald Trump is uniquely dangerous, a literal menace to society. Nay, not “discuss”: they are screaming it.
Anthropocene: The Human Epoch documentary review: the destruction of our planet, in pictures (EIFF 2020)
Astonishing: sometimes oddly beautiful but mostly like sci-fi horror. An anti-meditation nightmare, a call to arms if only we were ready to finally address our thoughtless impact on planet Earth.
Fanny Lye Deliver’d (aka The Delivered) movie review: birth of the modern woman (EIFF 2020)
Maxine Peake is stupendous in this deliciously audacious period horror, ambitious in emotional scope and with monsters who feel unexpectedly modern: men who wield religion as a tool of oppression.
Shirley movie review: lost girls gone mad
A beautiful-ugly film, a work of domestic gothic grotesquerie, of women’s suffocation and sacrifice, pain and isolation. Elisabeth Moss’s performance is next-level glorious in its wackadoo intensity.
Extra Ordinary movie review: oh, the mundanity!
Sly, sharp, and snarkily underplayed, this instant little masterpiece of fantasy comedy is as occasionally shockingly horrific as it is nonstop shockingly funny, peopled with instant fast friends.
Tape movie review: her too
Messy, furious, sometimes at odds with itself, this tale of documenting a powerful man’s sexual intimidation of a vulnerable woman is absolutely necessary, full of a rage that is absolutely vital.
The Platform (El hoyo) movie review: bold and bitter food for thought
This sci-fi dreadfest immerses you into a shocking mystery, punches you in the gut, then grips you with a wisdom that transcends its obviousness, daring you to deny that its open savagery is our own.
Swallow movie review: leaves a sour taste
Half a century ago, this would have been radical. Today, it’s banal. The slick postwar aesthetic is emblematic of a male filmmaker’s understanding of women that exists only through dated stereotypes.
The Lodge movie review: stuck in miserably mushy snow
This exasperating movie is so obnoxious it could be deliberately trolling us. Wants to have its ambiguous cake and eat it, too, smothered in a gloomy frosting. *extremely pinches nose in despair*
