Black movie review: tragically bad
A facile riff on Romeo & Juliet amongst Brussels gangs. Banal, clichéd, and treats its teenage-girl protagonist in a spectacularly disgusting way.
romance
Margarita with a Straw movie review: this ain’t no pity party
Open, frank, funny romantic dramedy about a young Indian woman living with cerebral palsy. A perfect antidote to the disability pity porn of Me Before You.
Holding the Man movie review: grand romance, no qualifiers needed
Told with a lovely romantic sweep and full of raw, honest emotion, this is a gay love story that’s also just a great love story, full stop. Yay.
Me Before You movie review: romantic dramedy delusions
This miscalculated romantic dramedy is pathetically simplistic about morally complicated issues, and kind of offensive to those living with disabilities.
Victoria movie review: no cutting to the chase here
The two-hour-plus single-take gimmick disappears into the background as the implausibility and the flatness of the protagonist come to the unfortunate fore.
Black Mountain Poets movie review: rhyme and unreason
A tasty treat of gentle but wise humor, full of as much sympathy but also tough love for its messed-up sisters as they are for each other.
Jane Wants a Boyfriend movie rating: red light
Drama about a young woman with Asperger’s looking for love is stilted, forced, phony, emotionally implausible, and rather paternalistic and patronizing.
Irrational Man movie review: the measure of a man’s midlife crisis
A blithe and chipper drawing-room comedy that, in a deliciously perverse way, plays with notions of chance and karma and very bitter irony.
The Mermaid (Mei ren yu) movie review: the biggest movie on the planet you haven’t heard of
A wacky fantasy lark, half screwball comedy, half Looney Tunes. Chinese audiences have thrown half a billion dollars at it. Prepare for Hollywood imitators.
Aloha movie review: hello, and good-bye
A mess of a romantic dramedy full of colonialistic offensiveness, forced quirkiness, implausible emotion, and oblivious masculine self-centeredness.
