Daddy’s Home movie review: floundering fathers
Clichés about good dads and bad boys go beyond the cheap and obvious and into the insulting. There’s nothing unexpected or even mildly amusing here.
reviews
Star Wars: The Force Awakens movie review: a new hope
Charts a path to a future that refuses to get mired in nostalgia. Yet all the Star Wars notes are here, remixed into a glorious new arrangement.
Snoopy and Charlie Brown: The Peanuts Movie (aka The Peanuts Movie) movie review: good grief
Of all the potential Charlie Brown movies Hollywood might have made, this might be the Charlie Brown-iest. That’s not necessarily a good thing.
Fat movie review: prisoner of his own body (and mind)
There is fearlessness here, and uncomfortable raw honesty, but there’s also little opportunity to care about a man who pushes everyone, including us, away.
Sisters movie review: women are messed-up people too
The just-right mix of wistfulness, snark, and painful personal growth makes this nonstop hilarious, with humor that gets women in a way movies rarely do.
Bleeding Heart movie review: sisters in waiting
There may not be much surprising here, but this is a smartly sensitive depiction of abuse and redemption that never descends into caricature.
Body movie review: lying lies and the lying women who tell them
Women’s friendships in dangerous situations are not something we see a lot of onscreen. But this ends up not really being about the women at all.
The Forbidden Room movie review: leave it locked
A grueling marathon of cinematic masturbation; a mind-numbingly empty exercise in self-conscious style with absolutely nothing to say.
The Night Before movie review: twas the bromance before Christmas
It’s bogged down by too many derailing tangents, but the three appealing leads have a wonderful chemistry, and it gets close to the spirit of the season.
In the Heart of the Sea movie review: here be monsters (and whales)
Solid, old-school man-versus-nature adventure melodrama, with a simmering green awareness; rollicking, smart, breathtaking, and sobering.
