movies by or about women opening UK/Ire from Fri Mar 23
Girls travel in space and fight monsters; women fight their own demons.
Boston
Adele and Everything After (aka Letting Go of Adele) documentary review: for love of a very special dog
Sensitive, marvelously engaging portrait of the extraordinary relationship between one woman and her service dog. A remarkable story told with intense empathy.
movies by or about women opening US/Can from Fri Jan 12 (updated)
Taraji P. Henson and Meryl Streep are doing men’s work in wide release, with small films from Europe, the Middle East, and South America highlighting women in limited release.
Brad’s Status movie review: when a white man can’t bear not having all the privilege
Ben Stiller is having another midlife crisis, and only his sincere, heartfelt performance saves this pile of unchecked white male privilege from self-parody. But only just.
Free Fire movie review: guns a-boring
A 90-minute shootout that never makes us care who lives and who dies. In attempting to send up a cinematic cliché, this only becomes a tedious example of same.
Patriots Day movie review: blurry portrait of a city
Unfocused like a 1970s cast-of-thousands disaster flick, and with little point beyond engaging in bland and easy propagandistic cheering. Boston deserves better.
Live by Night movie review: criminal tedium
Commits the cardinal sin of cinema: it’s boring. Feels like two hours of highlights from a 20-episode miniseries that only hint at a rich story tapestry.
Spotlight movie review: all the pope’s men
An elegy for old-school reportage and the people who pursue it, and a journalistic procedural with a snappy rush of urgent discovery and consequence.
Fat movie review: prisoner of his own body (and mind)
There is fearlessness here, and uncomfortable raw honesty, but there’s also little opportunity to care about a man who pushes everyone, including us, away.
Black Mass movie review: men behaving badly… again
A solid execution of a familiar tale, crammed with a likable, watchable cast. But it doesn’t have anything new to say about why men do despicable things.
