The Judge movie review: you can go home again
Avoids feeling as supremely calculated as it is, perhaps because Robert Downey Jr.’s snark and Robert Duvall’s crusty pragmatism vaccinate against it.
mystery
Finding Vivian Maier documentary review: secret art comes into the light
An extraordinary examination of a remarkable photographer, part portrait unraveled by meticulous detective work, part sharp criticism of the hidebound art establishment.
Sabotage movie review: DEAd end gang
Feels like a cheap action flick and plays like an unintentional call to end drugs prohibition and the idiotic war between cartels and law enforcement.
Veronica Mars review: fan service included
I’ve never seen the show that spawned it, but it was still exactly what I was expecting. I am neither overwhelmed nor underwhelmed by it. I am whelmed.
Searching for Sugar Man documentary review: musical mystery
I can’t remember the last film that rocked my world like this extraordinary documentary does. A magnificent detective story, bursting with a thrilling sense of mystery and of artistic discovery.
Martha Marcy May Marlene movie review: occupy victimhood
It takes an extraordinary film to turn the notion of woman-as-victim on its head… and an even more extraordinary film if it does posit as its central conceit that its protagonist has unquestionably been victimized.
Oranges and Sunshine (review)
Hilarious true story. You’ll love this. In the 20th century, up until as late as 1970, thousands and thousands and thousands of British children were forcibly deported to Australia, where they were herded into group homes or other institutions, treated like slave labor, and subject to regular physical and sexual abuse on top of the emotional abuse of being ripped from their families, their homes, their country.
Orphan movie review: John + Kate plus hate
Oh, how I wish this was a knowing parody, not an unwitting one. All the overbaked tropes of the genre are deployed: the “scary” music, the “menacing” camera angles, the telegraphing every boo.
Watchmen (review)
Probably the best three-hour version of the story that could be made…
The Beiderbecke Affair (review)
Obviously, I haven’t yet succumbed to a foolish bias that predisposes me to lap up *anything* just because it sports a British accent.
