Fair Play
FAIR PLAY may not be as smart and original as it initially seems, but the momentum, central performances, and cranked-up drama deliver an engrossing takedown of fragile male entitlement and the roles many inhabit to advance despite it.
Category Archives: Reviews
Fremont
FREMONT rarely puts a foot wrong, even if the walking speed is meandering to the point of dallying.
Stay Awake
STAY AWAKE’s interest in a microcosm of the US opioid crisis rather than the grand picture limits the film’s scope, and its emotional strength is limited by an insistence on diverting attention away from the addict.
Passages
The character of Tomas, whose emotional and sexual openness reflects commitment to art and new experiences, embodies Ira Sachs’s PASSAGES – uncomfortable and challenging but exhilarating and captivating.
Lie With Me
The events of LIE WITH ME would seem trivial to anyone other than the two concerned parties, and it is the everyday details and bucolic setting that allow character moments to organically emerge.
Oppenheimer
There are no more significant potential ramifications than the end of the world, and that awful looming mushroom cloud haunts every frame of OPPENHEIMER’s tense and emotionally violent portrait.
Barbie
From the bright pink Warner Brothers logo to Helen Mirren’s irony-soaked opening voiceover, BARBIE sets itself up as a wildly vibes-based moment of silliness. But the film is so much more than that, and in many ways not even that at all.
Smoking Causes Coughing
SMOKING CAUSES COUGHING has thin characters, subplots that are never followed up on, and a main plot where the heroes’ actions make no difference: none of that matters because the film is so wildly absurd and entertaining.
Asteroid City
ASTEROID CITY’s lasting gift is an emotional resonance that could act as a skeleton key to Anderson’s films, even for those who’ve previously found them cold and unapproachable. Simon Bowie reviews.
Medusa Deluxe
In Tom Hardiman’s audacious whodunnit debut, MEDUSA DELUXE, it’s the hair that is cursed, and a trio of viperous contestants each embody a facet of the Gorgonite sister mythology.