Eiffel movie review: Gustave’s erection
Comfortably unchallenging French romantic drama, though it does Freudian-slip into implying that the engineer was only inspired to erect his soaring tower when an old flame reawakened his, er, heart.
romance
The Book Keepers documentary review: a road trip through love and sorrow
A book is born; its author dies. Her husband takes up her work in a process of gentle, active mourning. Honest and hopeful, this journey through grief is beautifully structured for maximum poignance.
Cyrano movie review: out of tune
Peter Dinklage is wonderful, but this feels like a suggestion of a movie, not an actual one. It’s not romantic; there’s no humor, no absurdity. Its unpleasantness is as puzzling as it is inescapable.
A Taste of Hunger movie review: salt fat acid heat
Contemplative and tenderly observed, a slow-burn romantic and family drama about two complicated, difficult people and what they’re willing to risk to achieve their dream. Plus: Scandi food porn!
The King’s Daughter movie review: a royal disaster
Ostensibly a movie in the same way that a Victorian folly is ostensibly a Japanese temple or a medieval castle. That is: not at all. Like a themed high-school prom from 1994, and an accidental horror.
Copilot movie review: how love warps women’s lives
Tragic anti-romance uses cinematic conventions and the presumptions of fiction to disorient us. Bursts the bubble of a certain kind of movie delusion to highlight a harsh reality of women’s lives.
Together movie review: lockdown love-hate
Fresh, raw, wielding physical and psychological intimacy like a shiv, this is a deeply compelling, empathetic emotional roller coaster fueled by McAvoy’s and Horgan’s intense and cutting performances.
In the Heights movie review: hot in the city
Pure joy. It is singing and dancing, life and love, food and family, heritage and community in all its complexity. Harnesses Golden Age Hollywood verve and style in breathtaking, enrapturing ways.
Wonder Woman 1984 movie review: days of future past
The retro pastel optimism is ironic, but the dark stuff slips by in subtext. This bold, colorful tale, recalling classic superhero films, could be happening in a parallel universe… a much nicer one.
Songbird movie review: screechingly out of tune
An appalling melange of insipid disaster drama and implausible romance with a bit of dystopian satire thrown in. This is a crass cash-in meant to prey on our pandemic anxieties, not grapple with them.
