Logan movie review: wounded Wolverine, dangerous beast
The X-Men series — the entire superhero genre — has never seen a film like Logan before: raw, rageful, tormented, human. Best of the series yet.
western
Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts (89th Academy Awards) review
My pick: “Pearl,” blending new VR tech with old-fashioned characters and emotions, demonstrating storytelling possibilities that are beginning to open up.
The Magnificent Seven movie review: a dusty, dry husk of a movie
Humorless, rote, clichéd, and entirely unsurprising. Antoine Fuqua attempts to recapture old Hollywood magic — and fails — rather than create his own.
Hell or High Water movie review: there will be blood
Alongside plenty of heist-movie humor and suspense is a bleak fatalism grounded in depressing reality and resignation to the miserable necessity it demands.
Jane Got a Gun movie review: a woman’s view on the Old West
A gritty woman’s perspective on tropes of the western genre, a lean action drama that is sparse yet sympathetic, and laconic but simmers with deep emotion.
Theeb movie review: a tiny slice of the Great War, through a child’s eyes
A gorgeous, cracking adventure with a smart ring of authenticity, full of pulpy twists and perils, and with a sweetly naive but gruffly charming young hero.
The Hateful Eight movie review: all hat, no cattle
Inexcusably self-indulgent. Tarantino gratifies his enormous self-love and his amusement at his own genius at the expense of all else.
The Revenant movie review: an extreme walk in the woods
High-toned body horror that emotionally and tonally starts on one note and never deviates from it, which becomes rather exhaustingly dull.
The Dressmaker movie review: haute couture as a tragicomic weapon
So entertaining, so unexpected, so wonderfully oddball, so damn good. Witty genre-busting simmering with pathos, humor, and calamity.
The Keeping Room movie review: a place that women know
Call this a revisionist feminist postapocalyptic historical western home-invasion horror drama. But even that doesn’t quite do it justice.
