Dig Two Graves movie review: and bury this deep
Muddy and muddled 70s-style backwoods gothic Americana only comes to life when it rises to the accidentally silly. Little more than an incoherent showreel.
2017 theatrical releases
Another Mother’s Son movie review: punching Nazis, mom style
Not alt-history but a true story from a Nazi-occupied English-speaking place, a hugely relevant reminder that resistance to injustice is an absolute imperative.
T2 Trainspotting movie review: GenX running out of steam but chugging on
The sparse, cold satisfaction that could be wrung from Trainspotting’s punk insolence has been replaced by an exhausted cynicism. Which is exactly right.
Mean Dreams movie review: Paxton et justitia
Tepid teen romance turned implausible thriller is just about saved by a powerful, and unusually disturbing, performance from Bill Paxton (one of his last).
Personal Shopper movie review: shadows of sorrow
Strange and melancholy, this genre-defying portrait of grief and loneliness puts Kristen Stewart’s onscreen persona of restive reluctance to very effective use.
Get Out movie review: yes all white people
Shattering and deep-down bone-chilling. A viciously unsettling nightmare of race and privilege that carves out a much-needed paradigm shift for genre film.
Beauty and the Beast (2017) movie review: ever just the same, never a surprise
Like a theme-park mounting of the 1991 cartoon, or the blandified pop version of an enchanting signature character tune. A watered-down pastiche of itself.
The Ottoman Lieutenant movie review: erasing the past with sleight of cinematic hand
Odious propagandistic attempt to enshrine Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide of World War I into cinematic history via a tepid and unconvincing romance.
The Chamber movie review: hell and high water
A wonder of low-budget suspense, this is a horror movie with no monsters, only people in an impossible situation. Intense, claustrophobic, totally gripping.
Catfight movie review: punches not pulled
Takes women’s hostility out of the realm of the passive-aggressive and gives it free comedic rein physically in a way that is hilarious, disturbing, and pointed.
