I’ve just finished watching Netflix’s ‘Queer Eye’…
Should I write about it? I will if I get 10 new Patreon patrons by Saturday morning-ish…
Netflix
Ocean’s Eight movie review: revenge of the women
Breezy fun that sticks a shiv into Hollywood’s — and the larger culture’s — disdain for women. Wonderfully subtle comic performances from a great cast having a ball make for a perfectly suitable light diversion from the world right now.
2018 Webby Award winners (which I help pick)
A brief rundown of some of the film- and TV-related winners…
Mercury 13 documentary review: the even righter stuff
An essential documentary look at yet another example of historical feminism that should never have been forgotten: the first American in space might have and probably should have been a woman.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society movie review: the stories too painful to tell
A wonderfully old-fashioned tearjerker, with a thoroughly delightful cast, where cosy quaint Englishness is leavened by a harsh reality of World War II that pop culture has ignored.
The Titan movie review: bad science, worse science fiction
The science is ludicrous, the story is almost entirely free of drama, and the finale descends into the hoariest, most ridiculous clichés of the genre. But the future smart-house porn is lovely.
A Quiet Place movie review: hushed horror
An apocalypse unlike any onscreen before. A film often almost unbearably tense, in part because it audaciously reconsiders the role sound plays in eliciting our emotional response.
Oscar Nominated Documentary Shorts 2018 (90th Academy Awards) review
My pick: “Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405,” a marvelous portrait of artist Mindy Alper, one that challenges us all to know ourselves as well as she seems to, even when it’s incredibly painful.
Icarus documentary review: on athletes’ compromised wings
Perfectly illustrative of the serendipitous nature of documentary filmmaking as it pivots from a personal investigation of doping in sports into a thriller with global geopolitical ramifications.
Bright movie review: every little thing it does is the opposite of magic
Trolls the viewer and condescends to genre fans. A smirking, tone-deaf parable about racism that is itself racist, including about its made-up orcs and elves.
