weekend watchlist: some much needed yet very realistic eco-optimism
Plus adventures in drinking, hanging out in bars, and murder. (First published August 7th, 2022, on Substack and Patreon.)
FBI
Blacklight movie review: turn it off
Feels less like a movie than it does a hostage video. Poor Liam Neeson isn’t trying to hide how exhausted and trapped he is in his cinematic hamster wheel of cheap, violent revenge thrillers. It’s sad.
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.
Seberg movie review: inept tribute to a troubled movie star
French New Wave icon Jean Seberg plays an unwitting game of cat-and-mouse with the FBI in a strangled blend of biopic and paranoid thriller. Not even always fascinating Kristen Stewart can save this.
Richard Jewell movie review: innocent man, guilty movie
Cluelessly simplistic rendering of a 1990s media injustice ignores all the context in which it happened and demonizes the one journalist who acted professionally. Fails even as a conservative screed.
Angel Has Fallen movie review: and it can’t get up
A sad retread of The Fugitive. Dumb, pointless, confused, full of contempt for its audience, and laughably unable to convince us that Gerard Butler is an acceptable stand-in for Harrison Ford.
Destroyer movie review: holding out for an antiheroine
Nicole Kidman’s pitiless performance completely upends genre expectations in Karyn Kusama’s tense, grim crime noir. Uncompromising and subtly challenging, like a cerebral itch you can’t quite scratch.
Show Dogs movie review: everything is awful
Embarrassingly bad CGI; pratfalls; genital humor; denigration of cat ladies; horrible clichés and stereotypes. This is the cinematic equivalent of stepping in dog poop. You know, for kids!
Molly’s Game movie review: absolutely aces
Bold, tough, hugely entertaining. Like a new GoodFellas, except about a woman caught up in her own impudence and daring. Jessica Chastain is badass.
American Made movie review: they’re quite bad fellas, in fact
Style and humor galore, and a hugely entertaining performance from Tom Cruise. But should a true story of immense governmental corruption be quite this fun?
