Fast & Furious 8 (aka The Fate of the Furious) movie review: notes from the critics’ ward
EMPs and nukular codes and cyber crap and submarines, oh my! “What does this have to do with us?” Michelle Rodriguez cries, and I’m like I know, right?
suspense/thriller
The Belko Experiment movie review: team-killing exercise
A one-note scenario that never ups the ante on itself, and never even bothers to use its extreme situation to send up office politics or corporate policies.
Snowden movie review: the system’s self-correction
A gripping précis of what Edward Snowden learned at the CIA and NSA, why he went public, and why it matters. Entertaining yet also deeply unsettling.
Dig Two Graves movie review: and bury this deep
Muddy and muddled 70s-style backwoods gothic Americana only comes to life when it rises to the accidentally silly. Little more than an incoherent showreel.
Another Mother’s Son movie review: punching Nazis, mom style
Not alt-history but a true story from a Nazi-occupied English-speaking place, a hugely relevant reminder that resistance to injustice is an absolute imperative.
Mean Dreams movie review: Paxton et justitia
Tepid teen romance turned implausible thriller is just about saved by a powerful, and unusually disturbing, performance from Bill Paxton (one of his last).
Personal Shopper movie review: shadows of sorrow
Strange and melancholy, this genre-defying portrait of grief and loneliness puts Kristen Stewart’s onscreen persona of restive reluctance to very effective use.
Get Out movie review: yes all white people
Shattering and deep-down bone-chilling. A viciously unsettling nightmare of race and privilege that carves out a much-needed paradigm shift for genre film.
The Chamber movie review: hell and high water
A wonder of low-budget suspense, this is a horror movie with no monsters, only people in an impossible situation. Intense, claustrophobic, totally gripping.
Patriots Day movie review: blurry portrait of a city
Unfocused like a 1970s cast-of-thousands disaster flick, and with little point beyond engaging in bland and easy propagandistic cheering. Boston deserves better.
