The Creator movie review: meat versus metal
Looks great, but the plot falls apart if you poke it and makes no attempt to grapple with AI’s potential. Instead it renders its robot people as a racialized Other in a clunky metaphor for bigotry.
2023 releases
Brother movie review: who gets away with being reckless
A pall of dread, of terrible suspense, hangs over this powerfully empathetic drama about what it means to be a Black man navigating a racist world. Beautifully performed and structurally intriguing.
My Animal movie review: out of the wilderness (and into a bigger one)
A mysterious, mournful film about proscribed teenaged-girlhood and feral female sexuality. There’s nothing entirely original here, but what it has to say, it says with enormous confidence and panache.
The Dive movie review: don’t hold your breath
Intermittent moments of fleeting suspense punctuate literal and figurative murkiness (I gave up trying to figure out what was going on) as it flails around trying to pad itself out to feature length.
Scrapper movie review: girlhood interrupted
A singular portrait of a girl full of verve and personality. An astonishing feature debut from Charlotte Regan, with a film as cheeky and imaginative, as pleasantly messy and chaotic, as its heroine.
Oppenheimer movie review: a particle of concern, a wave of complicity
With human paradoxes at its nucleus, this is a riveting portrait, both intimate and epic, of the self-involved men who think they make the world go round… and too often, tragically, do.
Paris Memories (Revoir Paris) movie review: healing after horror
A deeply humane, delicately constructed journey through trauma and recovery that cuts like a knife and soothes like a hug, somehow, miraculously, managing both bundles of feeling at the same time.
Sympathy for the Devil movie review: schtick the landing
Rote cat-and-mouse thriller spins its wheels getting somewhere obvious, just so wild-eyed Nic Cage can cartoonishly Rage again. Look, the actor has found his schtick, and he’s sticking with it, okay?
Mavka: The Forest Song movie review: the dark of the woods comes too late
Traditional folk music and beautifully animated mythic motifs may be rightfully validating for homegrown Ukrainian audiences, but there’s little else beyond that novelty to capture others’ imagination.
What’s Love Got to Do with It? movie review: the boy next door, and a world away
Lily James and Shazad Latif? Delightful, even when they’re not together and sparking. No surprise where they’re going, but this amiable rom-com gets them there with genuine smarts and real sentiment.
