Overlord movie review: underwhelmed
This Nazis-with-supernatural-weapons horror schlock drags its feet getting to its fantastical elements and then does absolutely nothing interesting with them, just wallows in dull, rote gore and grue.
science fiction
Prospect movie review: frontier sci-fi with a working-class vibe
Smart, gritty-stylish indie science fiction that is actually about ideas, and about building a future world that is authentic and lived-in. It has a really memorable teen-girl protagonist, too, who is badass but still a real kid.
Venom movie review: no teeth, no bite
A dull, dated comic-book clunker that is somehow even smaller and lesser than the sum of its noisy, junky, clichéd bits. So perfunctory that it saps even its excellent cast of all their charisma.
The Predator movie review: pointless retro junk
Garbage. A bad excuse for a movie, even for the pulpy disposable popcorn nonsense it wants to be. Incoherent and illogical, cheap and shoddy. Wannabe sci-fi action horror that can’t pull off any of it.
Do You Trust This Computer? documentary review: artificial intelligence is already here
This slick gloss on the state of AI is frustratingly scattershot and won’t surprise anyone who has been paying attention. But its warnings about how we’ve dealt with huge and rapid scientific leaps before are worthy ones.
The Darkest Minds movie review: seeking a prom date for the end of the world
The YA dystopia is now just another fantasy setting for teen romance. We have normalized the apocalypse. Superpowered kids are being held in concentration camps, but OMG, will Ruby and Liam get together?!
The Meg movie review: shark lark
Jason Statham versus a giant prehistoric shark. It’s never less — yet also never more — than you expect, and never more suspenseful or scary than it is cheesy. But whatev. Go, and enjoy.
Teen Titans Go! To the Movies movie review: the last action heroes (to get a movie)
The superhero movie we need, and also the one we karmically deserve. A riot of hilariously zippy animation that gleefully shreds the clichés of the genre while also lovingly embracing its self-referential geek experience.
Mission: Impossible – Fallout movie review: here we go again
Masterful. I had so much fun with this, often laughing out loud in relief when the tension of a breathless action scene finally broke. So why am I feeling a bit meh about it?
The First Purge movie review: a ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ for #BlackLivesMatter
This shrewd sci-fi horror franchise is as sharp as ever as it reaches yet further down into the unpleasant flipside of the American myth. A rare prequel that doesn’t feel superfluous.
