weekend watchlist: a prophetic dystopia (that is also rather comforting)
Plus iconic performances from Jessica Chastain and Bruce Willis. (First published April 15th, 2022, on Substack and Patreon.)
NYPD
Naked Singularity movie review: New York misery
A very good cast makes a valiant go of it, but a hugely ambitious experimental novel has been boiled down to a tepid mishmash of genres: social-justice drama + black-comedy heist + sci-fi mind-bender.
Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts 2021 (93rd Academy Awards) review
The brilliantly unsettling “Two Distant Strangers” is not only the most important of the nominees but one of the movies of the year, of any length. Its surprises are more brutal than mere plot twists.
21 Bridges movie review: roads to nowhere
Bland, predictable cop and crime clichés lacking all urgency and any of the claustrophobia that should come from its high-concept premise. Shutting down Manhattan has zero impact on anything here.
If Beale Street Could Talk movie review: a velvet fist of love and strength
A beautiful story about ugliness, about dignity in the face of hatred, told via delicate yet steely performances that imbue it with a power at once tender and infuriating. Totally enrapturing.
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!
Exposed movie review: cover it up, burn it, bury it, never look at it again
To call it disjointed is an understatement: Exposed is unintelligible. It feels like two completely different movies inelegantly Frankensteined together.
Precinct Seven Five (aka The Seven Five) documentary review: badfellas
A Scorsese-esque look, fascinating and horrifying, at the 1990s NYPD scandal that saw cops become the biggest, baddest gang on the city streets.
Deliver Us from Evil movie review: weak spirits
A rote police procedural conducted by a cardboard movie cop investigating a supposedly demonic evil that simply cannot compete with nonsupernatural reality.
Blood Ties review: same old New York groove
Excellent performances by Clive Owen and Billy Crudup can’t disguise the fact that there’s absolutely nothing here we haven’t seen too many times before.
