daily stream: don’t tell Grandma she’s dying?
2019’s The Farewell is new on Netflix in the US, on Prime in the UK.
New York
Push documentary review: why the rent is too damn high (and how to fix it)
Badass UN Special Rapporteur Leilani Farha probes the global housing crisis and breaks down the complex cause into something readily comprehensible… then enraging. (But she has a solution, too.)
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald movie review: the crimes of this movie, though…
It certainly is MORE than the first movie: more incoherent, more confused about who its protagonist is, more crammed with contrivance and coincidence. Even the title is more nonsensical this time.
Anon movie review: brings a whole new meaning to ‘private eye’
This sci-fi riff on the end of privacy is not as provocative as it would like to be, and its mystery completely falls apart in the end. But its visual worldbuilding is fascinating.
Black Panther movie review: absolute Marvel
Classic comic-book stuff made fresh by drawing on underexplored mythologies and cultures, yet still deeply resonant and deeply universal. An exhilarating pulp-fiction dream that ups the ante on the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
movies by or about women opening UK/Ire from Mon Jan 01
Jessica Chastain and Maggie Q. get centered in their own stories, while Michelle Williams is this week’s Best Supporting Mother.
movies by or about women opening US/Can from Fri Jan 05
Molly’s Game goes wide, and a few foreign films about women arrive (in limited release) on US shores.
X-Men: Days of Future Past movie review: time for hope
With its time-twisting plot, sci-fi soapiness, powerful humanism, and to-die-for cast, this is the summer blockbuster done with elegance and heart.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist mini review
A provocative, ambitious drama about the unconsidered assumptions that power our cultures, for good or ill.
what’s the most dangerous thing about the place where you live?
Oklahoma City got walloped again last night by a series huge, deadly tornadoes, just two weeks after an even larger twister devastated its suburb Moore…
