A Kid Like Jake movie review: the kid is all right; the parents are freaking out
A movie as generous and as nonjudgmental as its protagonists, as frustrated yet as gently questing as they are. Claire Danes and Jim Parsons are extraordinary.
reviews by year
My Generation documentary review: when London was swinging
A brilliantly thrilling look back at the flowering of creativity and freethinking spirit of 1960s London, through the thoroughly charming perspective of Michael Caine.
The Breadwinner movie review: a daring girl’s adventure
Beautiful and startling, bursting with both brutality and hope, this animated adventure is too intense for young children, but the brains and bravery of its young heroine will inspire older kids and adults alike.
Edie movie review: go scream it on the mountain
This is no twee old-lady adventure. The magnificent Sheila Hancock crafts a portrait of elder womanhood as a tangy triumph of risk-taking over regret, and resolution over resignation.
Solo: A Star Wars Story movie review: where has our scoundrel gone?
A Star Wars–flavored juice drink* of a movie (*contains 10% real juice) that tells us nothing of significance we didn’t already know about Han Solo, in an incarnation that lacks his essential charisma and precarious danger.
1945 movie review: a reckoning for the collaborators
A quiet horror movie about grief and regret as spiritual possession, about rationalization and denial as immorality. We don’t tell ourselves stories that whisper, as this one does, The Nazis had help. We need to.
On Chesil Beach movie review: no sex, please, we’re British
This stilted, utterly implausible film manages the astonishing feat of being both histrionic and monotonous at the same time, trolling us with absurd clichés, yet doing so with a quiet solemnity.
Show Dogs movie review: everything is awful
Embarrassingly bad CGI; pratfalls; genital humor; denigration of cat ladies; horrible clichés and stereotypes. This is the cinematic equivalent of stepping in dog poop. You know, for kids!
Deadpool 2 movie review: kryptonite for superheroes
This is the death of the comic-book movie. Or it should be. The savage, inhumane nihilism here says, Yup, comics haters are right: this is dangerous nonsense with no morality or redeeming qualities.
Jeune Femme (aka Montparnasse Bienvenüe) movie review: the heroine of her own life
Laetitia Dosch burns with a passionate anxiety in French writer-director Léonor Serraille’s debut, a clever, wise, wildly unsentimental portrait of a woman learning how to be herself.
