Early Man movie review: primordial goop
A huge disappointment, crude and simple compared to Aardman’s earlier, more sophisticated and multilayered work. No satire or subversion, just a bog-standard triumph-of-the-underdog story.
reviews by year
12 Strong movie review: America enters the “graveyard of empires”
Tense but never sensationalized action adventure about the first post–9/11 US foray into Afghanistan, an extraordinary culture clash and mashup of medieval and modern technologies.
Please Stand By movie review: fan trek
A lovely, gentle geek adventure that appreciates the importance of fandom as a source of inspiration and comfort, with a subtle and resolutely unsentimental performance by Dakota Fanning as an autistic fan.
Maze Runner: The Death Cure movie review: cute boys at the end of the world
The Auto-Tuned boy-band version of the apocalypse. You will forgive that every plot point that isn’t a cliché is in fact a plot hole because the hero is so dreamy and impossibly perfect, right?
The Cinema Travellers documentary review: moving pictures, under threat
A marvelous film, so full of the wonder of movies, so melancholy about the changing cinema landscape, so hopeful that though the technology is changing, the love will endure.
Kangaroo: A Love-Hate Story documentary review: of human cruelty
A heartbreaking, deeply upsetting exposé of “the largest wildlife slaughter anywhere in the world,” one that has much to say about us humans and our relationship with the natural world.
Attraction (Prityazhenie) movie review: when ET is dreamy
It has a spectacular opening sequence, and features a few minor tweaks to alien-invasion tropes. But the teen romance at its center reduces this to a very inconsequential first contact.
Phantom Thread movie review: hate couture
A conundrum of a film that defies genre as it twirls us around a wickedly fascinating triad of gently, quietly manipulative people. A cinematic experience of sly eeriness and oblique mystique.
Hostiles movie review: white man’s burden
Sure, millions of Native people dead and ancient cultures destroyed, but who has to live with that? All the good soldiers who were just following orders, that’s who. Won’t someone think of the white man?
The Commuter movie review: on the wrong track
A lazy, insulting xerox of better movies about Liam Neeson growling into cell phones at enigmatic villains. Devoid of tension and mystery, and rife with plotholes that derail the trip.
