Gold movie review: dust in the wind
In a dry, dusty, desperate landscape, Zac Efron goes full grunge, effectively underplaying physical and psychological implosion. But there’s nothing unexpected in this brutal open-air chamber piece.
2022 releases
The Batman movie review: to bat, or not to bat
No snark, no spandex pantomime spectacle. Just noir mystery, Pattinson’s sad recluse a detective in a cesspit of corruption. Relentlessly grim, all darkness and despair, not escapist but of our time.
The Burning Sea (Nordsjøen) movie review: nightmare (fossil) fuel
Not terribly disastrous… until it is. Then movie-movie melodrama gives way to eco-cataclysm and new realms of planetary existential nightmare. I cannot recall a movie’s ending haunting me this much.
Dog movie review: magic mutt
Wounded veterans in reluctant-buddy road trip. Allegedly a comedy, but I don’t see much evidence for that. The schmaltz may be slightly more convincing than the comedy, but it’s a low bar to get over.
Death on the Nile movie review: Kenneth Branagh steps in the same river twice
This should be salacious! We should revel in the seething jealousy and simmering resentments! But there’s not much suspense or engagement in waiting for someone to die, nor in finding out whodunnit.
Blacklight movie review: turn it off
Feels less like a movie than it does a hostage video. Poor Liam Neeson isn’t trying to hide how exhausted and trapped he is in his cinematic hamster wheel of cheap, violent revenge thrillers. It’s sad.
Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché documentary review: a howl out of the past for today
A loving appreciation, but never a blinkered one, of the punk philosopher, a woman ahead of her time and still timely: iconoclastic, creative, ever-searching, a cultural observer who saw deep and far.
Maxima and Mothers of the Revolution documentaries review: women getting it done
Two new documentaries tell inspiring stories about ordinary women radicalized into revolutionary action, from anti-nuke protests in the 1980s to anti-corporate and anti-corruption activism today.
A Taste of Hunger movie review: salt fat acid heat
Contemplative and tenderly observed, a slow-burn romantic and family drama about two complicated, difficult people and what they’re willing to risk to achieve their dream. Plus: Scandi food porn!
The King’s Daughter movie review: a royal disaster
Ostensibly a movie in the same way that a Victorian folly is ostensibly a Japanese temple or a medieval castle. That is: not at all. Like a themed high-school prom from 1994, and an accidental horror.
