Sold movie review: the life of a child sex slave
Brutal yet sensitively rendered, putting a human face, if a fictional one, on an issue that rarely gets one. Almost Dickens for the 21st century.
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Grandma movie review: the wisdoms of age and youth
Wonderfully, aggressively feminist, a rare crossgenerational portrait of two women getting to know each other amidst a crisis. Smart and acerbically funny.
Dope movie review: not your typical high-school comedy
Not without its problems, but mostly a smart, engaging, bigotry-busting escapade with a hugely appealing young cast and an unflaggingly cheerful optimism.
The Here After (Efterskalv) movie review: what price forgiveness?
Brutally chilling in the banality of its examination of justice and forgiveness. A deeply unsettling film that challenges the empathy it carefully constructs.
The Boy and the Beast movie rating: yellow light
A few instances of gorgeous and magical imagery cannot make up for the lack of genuine emotion or a fresh story. Strictly for devoted anime fans.
Mustang movie review: the “wife factory”
Smart, perceptive, keenly observant, heartbreaking: how the world crushes girls and turns lively people into automatons merely because they are female.
My All American movie review: football fundamentalism
Not an inspirational football movie but the highlights reel from one, with a golden boy who is his own manic pixie dreamboat. The worst sort of hagiography.
Woodlawn movie review: Jesus is an Alabama football fan, obvs
A film taken with the singular American delusion that Jesus loves football… though it also throws in a new delusion: Jesus hates the U.S. Constitution.
The Green Inferno movie review: kill it with fire
If there is a target for the pitiless cynicism of this brutal exercise in cannibalistic gore, I can’t figure out what it is. Inhumane in multiple directions.
The Witch movie review: casts a good spell… and then a bad one
Eerie and sinister, operating on a more psychologically incisive level than the typical horror flick… until it tosses it all with a cop-out of an ending.
