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.
romance
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 (#HBOMax)
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.
The Secret: Dare to Dream movie review: I’m positive this is awful
Nice Guy garbage man Josh Lucas negs sad sack Katie Holmes. Based on the pernicious self-help philosophy that insists that everything wrong with your life is your fault. You know: feel-good romance!
The Lovebirds movie review: breaking up on the run (#Netflix)
The hugely appealing Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani share terrific comic and romantic chemistry and work their everywoman and -man charm to the max. Go-to goofy escapism for, say, a pandemic lockdown.
Endings, Beginnings movie review: when it ends is the best part
Love this cast, but, my god, I hate these characters. I hate this miserable take on romance, which mistakes wallowing in self-pity for introspection, and people being awful for philosophical depth.
Who You Think I Am movie review: on the Internet, no one knows you’re a sexy French lady
Not even the treasure that is Juliette Binoche can make this cynical romantic thriller palatable. Does not say the things about social media and the lives of older women that it thinks it does.
My Darling Vivian documentary review: from ardent lover to cold hard Cash (#SXSW2020)
Nascent celebrity culture and the myth of the artist’s muse are skewered by the tale of Johnny Cash’s first wife, Vivian Liberto, told by her daughters and a trove of vintage photos and love letters.
