Official Secrets movie review: blow all the whistles
Not a spy thriller but a story of emotional and intellectual suspense wrangling with matters of patriotism and of conscience, and of just how far journalism’s watchdog role can and should take it.
suspense/thriller
Corporate Animals movie review: work is hell
Corporate culture gets a delightfully twisted kick in the ass when a “team-building retreat” turns disastrous. As horror vies with comedy, the pitch(black)-perfect cast gets the balance just right.
It: Chapter Two movie review: it doesn’t float
A bigger misfire than its predecessor, and a waste of a great cast. Unsupportably overlong, with a feel-good self-care denouement that’s almost dangerous. The only terrifying thing here is the tedium.
Angel Has Fallen movie review: and it can’t get up
A sad retread of The Fugitive. Dumb, pointless, confused, full of contempt for its audience, and laughably unable to convince us that Gerard Butler is an acceptable stand-in for Harrison Ford.
Gwen movie review: a frisson of fright on the farm
Atmospheric mood — this is a dour nightmare in the stark gloom of 19th-century Wales — and a striking performance by Eleanor Worthington-Cox aren’t quite enough to sustain this near-horror film.
Midsommar movie review: välkommen to weird Ikea
It’s hard to escape the sense that Ari Aster is getting off on Florence Pugh sobbing and screaming as he fetishizes her terror and torment. And none of it is in the pursuit of any meaning or message.
Maiden documentary review: around the world in feminist ways
The riveting tale of misogyny-busting sailor Tracy Edwards is as beautifully modulated as fiction, full of twists and turns and delicious ironies, and even sports a perfect ending. Yet it’s all true.
In Fabric movie review: retail shock therapy
A murderous dress and creepy shop clerks add up to nothing more than exhausting nonsense full of fetishizing of women and weirdness for weird’s sake alone. Consumerism is killing us, or something.
Endzeit (Ever After) movie review: there will come soft rains
This German zombie flick offers horror with a spin of feminine steel, not soft but brutally maternal, as necessary as natural selection and as nurturing as civilizational, even planetary tough love.
Brightburn movie review: villainy, celebrated
Superman, but he’s evil. That’s the whole movie. This is a depiction of violent entitled sociopathy that may think it’s critiquing toxic masculinity yet is indistinguishable from a celebration of it.
