Atomic Blonde movie review: bland ambition
The living, breathing, bleeding life of the breathtaking fight scenes cannot overcome confusingly twisty spy intrigue and multiple male gazes on the story.
John Goodman
Kong: Skull Island movie review: ape-ocalypse now
Boiled down to its bonkers essence, Skull Island is a Vietnam war movie with monsters, a retro analog vibe, and a dash of both Moby-Dick and The X-Files.
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.
10 Cloverfield Lane movie review: the monsters women have to deal with
A marvelous little movie: compact, efficient, almost unbearably intense, smartly (perhaps accidentally) feminist. A glorious treat of pulp genre fun.
Christmas with the Coopers (aka Love the Coopers) movie review: familial torture
Glossy Hollywood automatons sleepwalk through family dynamics full of forced quirkiness, excruciating cuteness, and phony emotion. Absolutely cringeworthy.
Trumbo movie review: liberal Hollywood? ha!
Marvelously balances the silly and the solemn. There’s almost a whiff of the Coen-esque in its slick sharpness, in its whistling past the graveyard.
The Gambler movie review: to bet, or not to bet?
It doesn’t quite work as a package, but Wahlberg is a real pleasure to watch as he crafts a portrait of a tormented anti-hero with an apparent death wish.
The Monuments Men review: saving private collections (and public art)
As jaunty as Jean Dujardin’s beret, but in a sincere, old-fashioned kind of way. It could almost have been rediscovered from the 1940s…
this is what it looks like on a film premiere red carpet
Very intimidating! Especially when you know that everyone on the other side of the barriers is thinking, Who the hell is that? Should I know who she is?
Monsters University review: back of the class
Monsters, Inc. was in no way calling for a sequel, and here it is. (new DVD/VOD US/Can)
