The Many Saints of Newark movie review: far from heaven
The performances are terrific, the evocation of the period striking, but it feels redundant, more GoodFellas-lite than The Sopranos, and with several TV seasons’ worth of story crammed in.
1960s
One Night in Miami… movie review: the past, still prologue
An electrifying philosophical fantasia that imagines four towering figures of 1960s America arguing over how to navigate racism as Black men. Enraging, but also thrilling, bursting with cinematic joy.
MLK/FBI documentary review: suppressing dissent, American style
Beautiful in its style, enraging in its substance, this skewering of the FBI’s surveillance of the civil-rights icon is essential for understanding the near-term roots of white supremacy in America.
Small Axe: Mangrove movie review: parties and protests (LFF 2020)
A triumph. McQueen brings history to life and makes it sing with zest and passion, with a spirit that endures beyond the strife. A celebration of Black joy alongside a raging against Black oppression.
I Am Woman movie review: more a purr than a roar
A winsome Tilda Cobham-Hervey leads a rote rags-to-riches tale, though its rampant sexism is a villain women will recognize. Needs to be seen, even if it’s not quite the tribute Helen Reddy deserves.
John Lewis: Good Trouble documentary review: how to bend the arc of history
Essential portrait of the US Congressman and civil-rights activist, for its lessons in the power of passive resistance to injustice, and its underscoring of how America has regressed in recent years.
Shirley movie review: lost girls gone mad
A beautiful-ugly film, a work of domestic gothic grotesquerie, of women’s suffocation and sacrifice, pain and isolation. Elisabeth Moss’s performance is next-level glorious in its wackadoo intensity.
Spaceship Earth documentary review: under the dome, and under a scrutinous eye
Was Biosphere 2 scientific adventure or eco-entertainment? This is a gripping portrait of the billionaire’s folly/performance-art project, a hippie SF soap opera with unsettling resonance for today.
To the Stars movie review: run into the ground
Coming-of-age melodrama about misfit girls is at first passingly diverting, but it whips up mystery and suspense where it shouldn’t be, diminishing and minimizing an already neglected kind of story.
My Darling Vivian documentary review: from ardent lover to cold hard Cash (SXSW 2020)
Nascent celebrity culture and the myth of the artist’s muse are skewered by the tale of Johnny Cash’s first wife, Vivian Liberto, told by her daughters and a trove of vintage photos and love letters.
