Little movie review: small and slight indeed
Bullying tech CEO is cursed to revert to powerless kid-dom. The limp, desperate comedy that follows never figures out who its audience is and is often unintentionally obnoxious and disturbing.
reviews
Amazon Adventure 3D documentary review: historical jungle expedition, for science
Stunning photography — perhaps the last time anyone will haul IMAX cameras into the Amazon — a bit of adventure, and a solid, simple, inspirational science lesson. Everything an IMAX doc should be.
Missing Link movie review: unevolved throwback
A quite literally cartoonishly awful protagonist, a plot that makes no sense, lowbrow humor, and terrible gender dynamics add up to an unpleasant retro mess.
Pet Sematary (2019) movie review: bad things happen when you leave the city
A lazy adaptation of the Stephen King novel, manipulatively cheap when it isn’t provoking eye-rolls at its genre banalities. Why can’t someone find the right role for the charismatic Jason Clarke?
Shazam! movie review: unmarvelous
Nothing matters in this literal adolescent-male power fantasy, a cheesy mishmash of nonsense and low stakes. Anyone who needs at least a bit of meat in their superhero tales will be disappointed.
Blowin’ Up documentary review: women getting shit done
A fly-on-the-wall peek into a court in New York City where women work to help other women with realistic solutions to complicated problems. A wonderful ode to creative and compassionate thinking.
The White Crow movie review: nothing to crow about
Elegant but dull, and so subtle it’s downright diffuse. If you don’t know much about Rudolf Nureyev going in, you won’t know much coming out, either. Weirdly, it doesn’t even feature much dancing.
The Brink documentary review: a nasty piece of work
I feared a portrait of human dumpster fire Steve Bannon would humanize him, but he’s beyond that. Can we use this inside look at his political and cultural manipulations to stop his fomenting of hate?
Dumbo (2019) movie review: you will not believe an elephant can fly
The most soulless of the live-action Disney remakes yet, weighted down by too many blah characters, too much convoluted plot, unconvincing CGI, and a message that doesn’t say what it thinks it does.
Out of Blue movie review: murder most muted
A limp noodle of a cinematic noir that drains Patricia Clarkson of her usual eccentric charisma. And where it aims for intriguingly oblique pseudoscientific philosophizing, it ends up merely obtuse.
