And here’s my second Sundance review for The Playlist, detailing the exquisite My Happy Family, a Georgian film by the directing duo of Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Gross. I’ve never seen anything they’ve made together before. I want to go back and watch all of their works now. My Happy Family is absolutely wonderful, and while I have a … Continue reading
New year, new Criterions! (New month, new Criterions, really, but shut up, indulged me.) January’s slate is, in a word, tight, featuring His Girl Friday and Something Wild. For me, the most important entry of the bunch is Black Girl, and I’m not just saying that because I wrote about it (though maybe a little because I wrote about … Continue reading
Alright! A quality episode of Taboo! After the stumbles taken in “Episode 2,” it’s nice to see the show get its footing back by actually telling a story instead of just checking off plot points. Plus, people who are not Tom Hardy are now getting more opportunity to strut their stuff, though Hardy is still the … Continue reading
I reviewed Christopher Smith’s Black Death on this very site six years ago, and so it was something of a pleasure to review his latest, Detour, even if I’m still murky on whether or not I think Detour is good. I liked it. I liked the film’s central gimmick, in which two narratives unfold representing the consequences of … Continue reading
xXx: Return of Xander Cage is an incredibly stupid movie, but it’s an incredibly stupid movie that proves the value of incredibly stupid movies. You will not “turn off your brain” while watching it so much as your brain will forcibly shut down to avoid shaving off any of your precious IQ points; at … Continue reading
I’m not at Sundance, but that doesn’t mean I can’t remotely cover Sundance from home! For The Playlist, I reviewed a pretty good documentary called The Workers Cup, about workers building the future stadium for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, and by “building” I mean “kinda being treated as subhuman by their employers in some truly fucked … Continue reading
Surprise: Studio Ghibli made a beautiful movie. Once you’re done collecting your jaw from the floor, you can click this link and zip over to The Playlist and read the review I wrote about Michaël Dudok de Wit’s The Red Turtle, a movie so lovely, minimalist, and thoughtful that it may assuage whatever sociopolitical anxieties you’re wrestling … Continue reading
Annnnnnd just like that, after Taboo‘s pilot episode, we see a steep drop-off in its palability. I wouldn’t call it “bad,” per se, but boy, it is way overstuffed; each time I thought I’d finished summing up the events of the second episode (titled, rather simply, “Episode 2”), I realized that I’d left something out. Plot, … Continue reading
Following Underworld: Blood Wars, the first stop on my January Tour of Terribleness, is The Bye Bye Man, a movie that is far worse but which I liked far more. You could say that this thing is so bad that it’s good, but if you did you’d be wrong. It’s so bad that its badness becomes spectacle and … Continue reading
What better way to kick off my 2017 than by taking a break from watching important films of substance (and, for the most part, high quality!) to watching movies like, well, this? It isn’t a secret that I think the entire Underworld series is awful, and it’s less a secret that its awfulness is a sore point … Continue reading
Since Brooklyn Nine-Nine is taking a break until April (April!), I’m satisfying my weekly TV recap cravings by reviewing Taboo, that wacky-ass Tom Hardy show on FX. It’s not bad! It’s also not great. The pilot starts off strong, and as you’ll see in recaps since, it stumbles a bit from being overburdened by plot; maybe if … Continue reading
Let me tell you: Based on the poster, I honestly expected to hate Hidden Figures with a passion. I expected it to be sappy feel-good bullshit; I expected it to do its history a series of disservices; I expected it to waste its talented leading actresses. But it doesn’t! At all! The film works! I don’t … Continue reading
Last October, I was given the opportunity to have a sit-down with Patrick Ness, author (ish) of the low fantasy, young adult novel A Monster Calls, and to talk with him about the experience of adapting his own novel (ish) from page to screen. (“Ish” meaning: Ness was contracted to write it, but author Siobhan Dowd, who … Continue reading
This is it, dudes and dudettes: My last “best of 2016” post, at least I think it is, because who knows, I could have written a thing or three for other lists that I’ve just plum forgotten about. Anywho, what the title says. The Online Film Critics Society has announced the winners of its 2016 … Continue reading
Funny fact/fun fact: The Boston Online Film Critic Association‘s year-end top ten podcast lasts about as long as most of the films on the actual top ten itself, so you can either listen to the podcast, or you can go watch one of those films. Or you could listen to the podcast and watch all … Continue reading
A couple years back, I wrote a review of Justin Simien’s awesome feature debut, Dear White People, and assholes on the Internet decided that the best response to a film so named was to drop a bunch of racist-as-fuck comments in the comments section, without really reading the review (or seeing the movie, obviously). My editor … Continue reading
How weird. I’m slowly becoming disenchanted with Brooklyn Nine-Nine, one of my go-to favorites for unwinding during the week. Not that the New Year two-parter is bad (though I am disturbed at how often I find myself repeating this sentiment), but as with the New Girl crossover, it feels unnecessary. If the show wanted to do a … Continue reading
The last Paste Magazine Criterion round-up of 2016 published just after the New Year, and that’s just fine. What’s not fine is Heart of a Dog, a movie that I can’t bring myself to beat up on but which I didn’t really like; it’s one of those critical darlings I can’t help but give a thorough … Continue reading
Happy New Year! Here is another link to a piece at Paste Magazine about everything that was good in 2016 (which is not to say that I personally like every movie that appears on the list, because I don’t, but more that Paste’s collective writer pool has a set of very diverse tastes). I wrote … Continue reading
A Constant Visual Feast 