reviews by year

A beautifully crafted film in all respects. The script, Grant’s own, is witty and wise, not reducible to catchphrases or pithy bon mots but twinging with pain and hope. And she creates an aching loveliness of psychic empty space…

A steaming pile of meaningless, worthless, civilization-in-decline, orgy-of-violence, bread-and-circuses sign of the apocalypse…

Holy ruby slippers, is this one grim film. Enthrallingly spooky, appropriately frightful, but grim. Grim like it might make the Brother Grimm, “Well, it’s a bit *dark,* isn’t it?” in an accusatory tone.

This isn’t a commentary on the breakdown of law and order, of civil society itself — it’s a symptom of it.

Imagine ‘Single White Female’ as mounted by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and you’ve got it. Oh, snickered the critic longing for smart silliness, do I love this movie.

Watts and Norton are extraordinary actors, and in fine form here, but they never click together…

Getting lost in all the well-earned love for Whitaker is his costar, James McAvoy, the primary focus through which Whitaker’s starburst prisms into its brilliance — here is another actor who will astonish you with a very different kind of performance…

I’m not supposed to say this, as a woman, as a film critic, and particularly as a woman film critic, but I’m not a fan of Pedro Almodóvar.

I wish Roger Corman had made this movie.

Imagine the Smurfs meeting Troll dolls in the world of ‘The Dark Crystal’…