Sinners movie review: bootleg vampires
Wildly primal, big and bold, fueled by pain and rage, by community and family, throbbing with love and sex and joy, infused with magic. A sumptuously textured, unmissable howl of a passion project.
1930s
Lee movie review: the things she saw, and the way she saw them
It barely scratches the surface of the enormous audacity of WWII photographer Lee Miller, but still this is an important movie. It’s also joyous filmmaking, with terrific performances all around.
Oppenheimer movie review: a particle of concern, a wave of complicity
With human paradoxes at its nucleus, this is a riveting portrait, both intimate and epic, of the self-involved men who think they make the world go round… and too often, tragically, do.
Death on the Nile movie review: Kenneth Branagh steps in the same river twice
This should be salacious! We should revel in the seething jealousy and simmering resentments! But there’s not much suspense or engagement in waiting for someone to die, nor in finding out whodunnit.
Munich: The Edge of War movie review: they’ll try to thwart Hitler!
Dull, earnest fanfic full of halfhearted secret-agent shenanigans and a misguided rethink of Chamberlain the appeaser. Same-old rote, by-the-number World War II–ing we’ve seen countless times before.
Radioactive movie review: science, bitch
Rosamund Pike is perfection in this intellectual romance, an unsentimental portrait of a woman striving to be appreciated for her mind at a time even more anti-woman than today. Feminist and flinty.
movies by or about women opening UK/Ire Feb 07
Cathy Yan directs and Christina Hodson writes Birds of Prey, starring Ella Jay Basco Margot Robbie; more… [This post is for Patreon patrons only for the first month.]
Quezon’s Game movie review: earnest historical drama struggles to tell its important tale
An untold Holocaust story, of Philippine president Manuel Quezon’s fight to take in Jewish refugees, feels like it remains untold: this sluggish, overlong film cannot overcome its low-budget roots.
Mrs Lowry & Son movie review: portrait of the artist as an abused man
A study of the painter LS Lowry that, with sly whimsy and darkness, finds a universality of the creative psyche via the toxic relationship with his mother, who tried (unsuccessfully) to crush him.
Oscar Nominated Documentary Shorts 2019 (91st Academy Awards) review
My pick: Marshall Curry’s “A Night at the Garden,” presenting footage from a 1939 “pro-America” rally in New York City, a chilling reminder of the unpleasant cycles of American history.
