A Fantastic Woman movie review: the horror of grief denied
A quiet yet resolute portrait of bravery and resilience in the face of unconscionable bigotry, and distressingly moving. Specific yet universal, and wonderfully human.
romance
November movie review: the woods are just trees, the trees are just wood
An all-style and very-little-substance exercise in random oddity and weird imagery. Dispenses with engaging characters and revels in its own meaninglessness as if emptiness were deep and significant.
The Boy Downstairs movie review: the ex factor
An appealing high concept that could have gone in many wildly different directions, all emotionally charged, instead wallows in a wan, bloodless banality of “chill.”
Brakes movie review: when romance comes crashing down
This ultra-low-budget indie uses its own rough edges to great effect in its skewering of the happily-ever-after rom-com fantasy. Bleak, brutal, absurd, and painfully realistic.
Fifty Shades Freed movie review: no shades of gray
My Fifty Shades of Grey fantasy: Anastasia Steele gets a restraining order against Christian Grey, writes a tell-all book about him, and becomes a #MeToo/#TimesUp heroine. Mmm, sexy.
Peter Rabbit movie review: splat the bunny
Tosses out the very sentiments that make Beatrix Potter’s work so beloved and so enduring in favor of the sullen bratty championing of cruelty and disenchantment. Nihilistic money-grubbing garbage.
Attraction (Prityazhenie) movie review: when ET is dreamy
It has a spectacular opening sequence, and features a few minor tweaks to alien-invasion tropes. But the teen romance at its center reduces this to a very inconsequential first contact.
Phantom Thread movie review: hate couture
A conundrum of a film that defies genre as it twirls us around a wickedly fascinating triad of gently, quietly manipulative people. A cinematic experience of sly eeriness and oblique mystique.
Call Me by Your Name movie review: met a boy cute as can be…
You can feel the stillness and the heat of this sultry, sensual summer in Italy. This is a glorious romance about falling in love with life itself, and living with gusto.
I, Tonya movie review: a woman at war with herself
A black comedy about domestic violence, parental abuse, and low self-esteem (and it works!), one that challenges our appreciation of how true based-on-fact might be.
