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The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part Review — Superfluous as the title
The LEGO Movie ended by blowing up its universe so completely that the biggest challenge faced by its (two!) 2017 spinoffs was finding something, anything to make those stories feel like they were worth telling. They had mixed success, neither fully managed to overcome the hurdle. It seemed that the LEGO movie brand had decided…
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Green Book Review — Out of step
You know how sometimes you’re watching a film and you’re like; ‘Wow. They really thought they could do this scene and nobody would notice?’
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If Beale Street Could Talk Review — Family values
It’s hard to know where to begin, every shot in this film aches with such sincerity and affection that by about the twenty minute mark I was already a puddle of tears in an oversized hoody. Sure, I’m a sucker for tragic romance, seeing struggling people pull together to face adversity. The leads of If…
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The Mule Review — Some ass
Clint Eastwood always looks like he’s wearing shoes two sizes two small nowadays. In The Mule he casts himself as a ninety year old failed horticulturalist who — out of a misplaced sense of pride — instead of turning to the family he abandoned years before, starts running drugs in order to make a living.…
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Vice Review — Politics as unusual
Vice ends on a scene where we flash back to a focus group earlier seen determining that ‘climate change’ were a less credible threat than ‘global warming’. In it a liberal and a conservative start getting into an argument over the film’s credibility as a factual document. Off to the side, a young woman already…
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Mary Queen of Scots Review — Yaaasss Kween
Mary Queen of Scots wants to be a big feminist picture. A brutal excoriation of the wrongs done to women, powerful before their time, brought down by men who cannot counteance their position. In truth I have little idea how historical a work it is, writer Beau Willimon (of House of Cards, among others) adapted…
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Glass Review — First name Good, last name Movie
I’ll admit, the first shot of Glass didn’t fill me with much confidence. A masculine bodied person, wearing a dress, stalks into a room to intimidate a new batch of abducted young girls. It spoke to everything that I hated about Split: its stigmatisation of non-normative bodies, the casual nature of its depictions of abuse.…
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Colette Review — Queer disunity
When watching stories about queers set before the invention of the horseless carriage; I prefer them to be unsubtle. Hence, Colette gets immeasurably more satisfying once its leads’ decide to cancel monogamy and just start fucking everyone. Keira Knightly plays the young bisexual wife of Dominic West’s publishing magnate: the man who inducts her into…
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Stan & Ollie review — Another fine mess
About halfway through my screening of Stan and Ollie, someone sitting behind me said — in reference to the antics of the leads’ respective wives — ‘These bloody women.’ A strange reaction to have, I thought, given that they’re the best part of the film. I mean, the tale of Laurel and Hardy’s farewell tour…
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Welcome to Marwen Review — Toy Story
Bob Zemeckis is too straight to make a movie about a homophobic hate crime.
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A Grand Quiet 