Passing movie review: the realities and fallacies of race
Everything about this astonishing, just-plain-satisfying film feels like a revelation. Bone-deep subversive yet universal, dripping with a quiet dread yet also beautiful and beautifully wise.
reviews by year
Don’t Look Up movie review: is the sky falling?
I laughed a lot while also feeling sick to my stomach. As subtle as a sledgehammer, almost obnoxious… and yet it might as well be a documentary. Is it elegant? Is it art? Who the fuck cares?
Delicate State movie review: life goes on as the world falls apart
An ultra-low-budget marvel, a perspective on societal disruption and disorder as everyday precariousness comes for those previously sheltered from it. Barely speculative, maybe terrifyingly prescient.
Silent Night movie review: house party at the end of the world
Apocalyptically sorta-satirical, bone-deep terrifying slap in the face that humanity has properly earned. Formidable, intense… and funny, in a very dry way that is nevertheless difficult to laugh at.
Boiling Point movie review: out of the frying pan…
An electrifying work of high-wire cinematic theater, a one-take, one-location wonder. Documentary-esque but even more immediate, simultaneously intimate and explosive. Stephen Graham is glorious.
Shepherd movie review: gothic shaggy dog
Elegantly gloomy but ultimately unsatisfying gothic rural horror that is all too-static mood. Tom Hughes makes a valiant go of a descent into madness, but the character is little more than his misery.
Dune movie review: dreams of alien worlds
Monumental. Villeneuve tells a familiar story with uncommon elegance and pensiveness, even dreaminess, on a breathtaking scale. A stunningly gorgeous, supremely dignified movie about ugly things.
Cop Secret movie review: cold fuzz (LFF 2021)
Absolutely hilarious Icelandic sendup of action buddy cop movies. Knowing, sneaky, and deliciously deadpan, upending toxic masculinity and elevating the usual subtext of the genre to the overt text.
No Time to Die movie review: no, Mr Bond, I expect you to retire
In the era of COVID and Brexit, much of this overstuffed adventure feels redundant, farcical, inconsequential, and desperate. But Ana de Armas and Lashana Lynch show us the way to a future for 007.
Censor movie review: the horror of the persistence of memory
Ambiguous, introspective, thoughtful. As weirdly uncomfortable as horror should be, and rarely is, as it examines how these movies can infect us. Niamh Algar is terrific, and deeply empathetic.
