Renfield movie review: it mostly sucks
Nicholas Hoult is lovely. Hammy Nicolas Cage is amusing. But everyone in this movie is in a different movie; the tonal mismatches are baffling. Was it the first draft of this script that was greenlit?
2023 releases
Rare Objects movie review: broken things, on the mend
It’s overstuffed and often jarring. But it’s also honest and unassuming, never insipid or sentimental, with a rough power, a generous spirit, and performances that are warm, wise, and perceptive.
The Pope’s Exorcist movie review: ham and cheese on why?
More of the same old religious-horror hoohah, plus Russell Crowe hamming it up, complete with terrible Italian accent. Its only twist on the usual exorcist-movie nonsense is genuinely pretty appalling.
How to Blow Up a Pipeline movie review: it means the earth to them
A heist drama, incendiary and intense, with planetary stakes. These young people are desperate, with nothing to lose, and everyone older than them made them this way. Nihilism is their only optimism.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves movie review: dudgeon and draggin’
A high-fantasy action comedy of tedious slapstick and obvious punchlines you scry the instant a wannabe medieval wag opens their mouth. It’s all borderline incoherent, sketched in cheap-looking CGI.
65 movie review: dino droppings
Adam Driver’s intensely focused, utterly unironic performance is the only saving grace of this movie of few ideas and little suspense, mystery, or excitement. There aren’t even that many dinosaurs.
Full Time (À plein temps) movie review: mother of invention
This relentless, heart-in-your-throat, ticking-clock thriller about precarious single-motherhood could not be more timely or more intimate. As real, and as recognizably stressful, as the genre gets.
Knock at the Cabin movie review: there appears to be an apocalypse happening
There is only one thing worse than an M. Night Shyamalan movie with a twist ending. And that is one without a twist ending. Feels like a faith-based movie trying to sneak in under a disingenuous wire.
Blue Jean movie review: cowardice and bravery as matters of survival
A powerful, necessary film, deeply humane and sympathetic, ugly-beautiful in its panic, full of dread and bad behavior. We feel every iota of Jean’s anxiety at closeted life in the homophobic 1980s.
Magic Mike’s Last Dance movie review: hustle and grind
Do you find Channing Tatum dance-grinding appealing? There’s not much of that here. There’s just the tedious grinding of dragging out yet another sequel in the face of diminishing franchise returns.
