Cyrano movie review: out of tune
Peter Dinklage is wonderful, but this feels like a suggestion of a movie, not an actual one. It’s not romantic; there’s no humor, no absurdity. Its unpleasantness is as puzzling as it is inescapable.
Ben Mendelsohn
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.
Robin Hood (2018) movie review: it should be outlawed
Ugly, garish, anachronistic like a small mean child playing with matches, and completely lacking in anything Robin Hood–y: there’s no fun, no romance, no virtue. Instead? Bizarre “aesthetics” and even worse politics.
Ready Player One movie review: trivial pursuit*
A nightmare of nothingness, of empty, soulless wankery, that serves only to reassure male dorks that their pop-culture obsessions make them special, and will make cute girls like them.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story movie review: the high price of hope
There’s genuine fun here, but the humor is cynical, the heroics are tinged with regret, and it’s all delivered with a cold smack of — yes — political relevance.
Mississippi Grind movie review: a killer hand
A compelling character study of two intriguingly flawed people, the sort of richly observed drama that has gotten all but pushed out of mainstream cinema.
Exodus: Gods and Kings movie review: whites only
Simultaneously the dullest and the most insulting version of itself it could possibly be. If only it had managed to be campy, that’d be something…
Black Sea movie review: pirates of the Crimea
An underwater heist of Nazi loot? Awesome. Submarine movies don’t get much better than this intensely suspenseful popcorn adventure.
Starred Up review: no feel-good redemption to be found
Could be the most realistic depiction of the horribleness and the ineffectiveness of institutional incarceration that I’ve ever seen.
Killing Them Softly (review)
Turns a dark mirror on crime mythology to reflect a startling, unflattering image of America.
