movies by or about women opening US/Can from Thu Dec 13
KiKi Layne stars in drama If Beale Street Could Talk; Nadine Labaki directs social-realist drama Capernaum; more…
Philippa Boyens
movies by or about women opening UK/Ire from Sat Dec 08
Susanne Bier directs science fiction drama Bird Box; Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi codirects documentary Free Solo; more…
Mortal Engines movie review: it’s got no rev
Like the book it’s based on, the worldbuilding is intriguing, but the characters and story are strictly cliché. A lazy, confused, and derivative disaster, with plot points and visual and thematic motifs shamelessly stolen from far better movies.
Where Are the Women? The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Peter Jackson would have been better off, if he was worried about how women are represented on film, just leaving his Hobbit female-free. [This post is not behind the paywall.]
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (review)
No, not all who wander are lost. But doesn’t mean that some who wander aren’t lost. Such as Peter Jackson, with his first-of-three-parts big-screen adaptation of The Hobbit.
King Kong (2005) (review)
Words like ‘meditation’ and ‘contemplation’ may seem inappropriate, at first glance, because the standard hack-movie-critic phrases like ‘roller-coaster ride’ followed by multiple exclamation points don’t even come close to doing justice to the heart-revving adrenaline rush Jackson has crafted. Two words: dino stampede. I probably should have put my head down between my knees and taken a series of long, deep breaths to recover from that early Skull Island setpiece, except it would have meant taking my eyes from the screen, and there was no way in hell I could have done that.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (review)
Other critics have already dragged out the $10 words to describe this film — some of the ones I’d chose myself are ‘seductive,’ ‘masterful,’ ‘majestic,’ and ‘elegant’ — and you must believe what they say because they say True Things. But the one thing that strikes me most about LOTR: FOTR, besides its seductively masterful and majestic elegance, is simply how utterly right it is.
