The White Crow movie review: nothing to crow about
Elegant but dull, and so subtle it’s downright diffuse. If you don’t know much about Rudolf Nureyev going in, you won’t know much coming out, either. Weirdly, it doesn’t even feature much dancing.
reviews by year
The Brink documentary review: a nasty piece of work
I feared a portrait of human dumpster fire Steve Bannon would humanize him, but he’s beyond that. Can we use this inside look at his political and cultural manipulations to stop his fomenting of hate?
Dumbo (2019) movie review: you will not believe an elephant can fly
The most soulless of the live-action Disney remakes yet, weighted down by too many blah characters, too much convoluted plot, unconvincing CGI, and a message that doesn’t say what it thinks it does.
Out of Blue movie review: murder most muted
A limp noodle of a cinematic noir that drains Patricia Clarkson of her usual eccentric charisma. And where it aims for intriguingly oblique pseudoscientific philosophizing, it ends up merely obtuse.
The Crossing (Guo Chun Tian) movie review: smuggler’s blahs
This uninvolving coming-of-age crime drama tries to dazzle with visual tricksiness, but it cannot make up for its teen protagonist who is mere metaphorical symbol, and a bystander in her own story.
Us movie review: a new kind of horror for a newly precarious world
An anxious moan, a looming disquiet of a reckoning coming for America. This is horror as weird, funny, damning, and more disconcerting the more you think about it, finding fear right in front of us.
The Fight movie review: a woman’s struggle is real…
Actor Jessica Hynes makes an astonishing directorial debut with this disconcerting little movie about women’s everyday anger and resentment, and the absolute battle just to get through the day.
Five Feet Apart movie review: love/sick teen romance
Beautiful teens fall in love while dying prettily in this year’s tragic young romance, one that medical necessity renders refreshingly chaste. Best bit: Star Haley Lu Richardson is genuinely charming.
Children of the Snow Land documentary review: an epic journey… to and from school
An unexpected, beautiful movie about the character and mettle it takes just to go to school when you come from one of the poorest and most remote places on the planet. A profoundly moving journey.
Captain Marvel movie review: superpowered female SJW invites manbaby nerds to suck it
An indie ethos comes to the comic-book movie, upending the origin story and offering a female superhero who throws out the boys’ rule book, goes her own way, and stalks among us with easy confidence.
