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2/4
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Between Two Worlds
(2021)
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David Walsh
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Overall, although Between Two Worlds is sincere enough, it has a rather tepid, unadventurous character. The subject matter is worthwhile, but the film is hardly ground-breaking.
Posted Nov 02, 2023
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The Present
(2020)
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Joanne Laurier
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The short film treats the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, focusing on the brutal checkpoint system.
Posted Nov 02, 2023
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El Conde
(2023)
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Joanne Laurier
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Chilean director Pablo Larraín ... has made a horror-satire, the award-winning El Conde (The Count), which imagines Pinochet as a 250-year-old vampire. It is a complicated, dark, disturbing film about fascism, bourgeois corruption and counterrevolution.
Posted Nov 02, 2023
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Killers of the Flower Moon
(2023)
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David Walsh
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This is an appalling episode and an entirely legitimate subject for a film ... However, Scorsese does not treat the subject well. The three-and-a-half hour work is muddy, murky, repetitive and misanthropic, and even interminable in certain stretches.
Posted Nov 02, 2023
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2/4
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Asteroid City
(2023)
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David Walsh
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Two themes or moods seem to predominate in Asteroid City: first, despite the entertaining-humorous elements, a general melancholy, a restrained, hushed quality; second, the sense that the writer-director is to a considerable extent overwhelmed by events.
Posted Aug 15, 2023
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Barbie
(2023)
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Joanne Laurier
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Barbie is strained and smug without much wit. One should bear in mind that Mattel, with revenue of $42 billion in 2022, partnered with Warner Bros. on the making of the movie.
Posted Jul 29, 2023
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Oppenheimer
(2023)
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David Walsh
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Oppenheimer is a serious and appropriately disturbing film about nuclear weapons and nuclear war. It is intended to leave viewers shaken, and it succeeds in that.
Posted Jul 28, 2023
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Guantanamo Diary Revisited
(2022)
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Joanne Laurier
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In Guantánamo Diary Revisited, Slahi—who endured countless forms of abuse at the hands of the nefarious “special projects” team between 2002 and 2004—and the filmmakers attempt to track down his torturers in the military and intelligence apparatus.
Posted Jul 20, 2023
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Chevalier
(2022)
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David Walsh
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Chevalier is seriously marred, not only by the gravitational pull of identity-racial politics but by a generally low level of historical knowledge and understanding.
Posted Jul 05, 2023
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King Coal
(2023)
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Joanne Laurier
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The present actuality of mine closures, devastated towns, COVID pandemic and a drug epidemic cannot be scrubbed away with fetching façades and charming dance moves.
Posted May 27, 2023
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2/4
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Bad Press
(2023)
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Joanne Laurier
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Rebecca Landsberry-Baker and Joe Peeler’s Bad Press opens with the revealing fact that only five of 574 sovereign Native American nations legally guarantee freedom of the press,
Posted May 27, 2023
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2/4
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Daughter of Rage
(2022)
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Joanne Laurier
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To borrow a phrase, ideas never lead beyond the status quo but only beyond the ideas of the status quo (and sometimes not even that). Baumeister’s film is gut-wrenching, but the viewer is left hanging because of a lack of context.
Posted May 27, 2023
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2/4
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The Tuba Thieves
(2023)
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David Walsh
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All in all, The Tuba Thieves too rambles aimlessly, hoping apparently that it will stumble by accident on important truths about sound, music and listening. Genuine insight does not emerge by accident.
Posted May 27, 2023
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2/4
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Milisuthando
(2023)
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David Walsh
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The film points to various dilemmas, but it is short of important conclusions. It is easier to have feelings and intuitions, and injured feelings, than definite and substantive ideas.
Posted May 27, 2023
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2/4
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The March on Rome
(2022)
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David Walsh
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Cousins makes only a fleeting reference to World War I and no mention at all of the wave of militant strikes that erupted in postwar Italy, culminating in the mass occupations of factories and shipyards in 1920.
Posted May 27, 2023
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2/4
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Tori and Lokita
(2022)
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David Walsh
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It is rather drab and dull, without many compelling moments. Earnestness and conscientiousness are no substitute for artistic flair.
Posted May 27, 2023
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American: An Odyssey to 1947
(2022)
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David Walsh
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American: An Odyssey to 1947 is a valuable and intriguing documentary film written and directed by Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Danny Wu. It centers on the artistic and political evolution of US film director Orson Welles.
Posted May 27, 2023
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4/4
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My Lost Country
(2022)
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David Walsh
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My Lost Country is a moving and poetically evocative film ... A piece of autobiography ... the work is intended ... as “an act of resistance” against the imperialist devastation of Iraqi culture and society.
Posted May 27, 2023
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The Whale
(2022)
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David Walsh
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One of the most deplorable elements of The Whale is its near celebration of defeat and resignation. The decision by Charlie to eat himself to death is treated as a meaningful act of self-sacrifice. Why would this possibly be so?
Posted Mar 24, 2023
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Aftersun
(2022)
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David Walsh
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The film is small, discreet, intimate, a little coy—at times, a bit self-involved and inward-turning. The somewhat self-conscious insistence on the lack of great drama can be tedious at times.
Posted Mar 24, 2023
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Babylon
(2022)
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Joanne Laurier
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Babylon is ambitious, and costly—and almost a complete shambles. It is badly constructed and unconvincingly done, providing little or no insight into the film industry, culture in general or American society.
Posted Mar 24, 2023
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The Swimmers
(2022)
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Joanne Laurier
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The Swimmers indelibly depicts the horrors of the refugee crisis. ... The film makes no attempt, however, to explore why millions of Syrians, for example, have been forced to flee their homeland or to name those responsible.
Posted Mar 24, 2023
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Living
(2022)
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Joanne Laurier
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The film’s thrust is humane, but its themes and satirical efforts are somewhat diluted and diffuse.
Posted Feb 26, 2023
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Lady Chatterley's Lover
(2022)
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David Walsh
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A drama along those lines can be trite ... or it may find something fresh and original to say. But if a filmmaker simply wants to do a “love story” about people from opposed social backgrounds, he or she has no real need of Lawrence’s novel.
Posted Feb 10, 2023
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To Leslie
(2022)
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David Walsh
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To Leslie is not flawless, it has contrived and overwrought elements, but it unquestionably and sincerely strives for psychological and social realism. Riseborough is no doubt a fearless and committed performer.
Posted Feb 10, 2023
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Voodoo Macbeth
(2021)
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David Walsh
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Like so many artists at present, taking the line of least resistance, Voodoo Macbeth’s makers largely project their own limited concerns and interests back into the past. The results are weak, flat and muddled.
Posted Feb 10, 2023
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2/4
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The Fabelmans
(2022)
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David Walsh
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Important art does not emerge from being cut off—or holding oneself apart—from broader realities, even if the source of that separation lies outside one’s immediate control, in definite historical and ideological difficulties.
Posted Feb 10, 2023
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Avatar: The Way of Water
(2022)
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David Walsh
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Cameron ... has been fortunate to have emerged—and could only have emerged—in a culture that demanded so little: efficiency, productivity, special effects innovation, sustained bursts of mechanical spectacle, a minimum level of dramatic believability.
Posted Feb 10, 2023
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White Noise
(2022)
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David Walsh
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The film is lively, extravagant, and removes Baumbach, at least for a time, from the narrow confines of the not very fruitful or absorbing middle-class introspection ... within which he previously seemed to be enmeshed.
Posted Jan 15, 2023
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Tár
(2022)
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David Walsh
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Tár, written and directed by Todd Field, is a drama about a world-famous classical music conductor and how she is brought low by a sordid sex scandal. It is a serious and worthwhile film, whatever the balance of its various merits and defects.
Posted Jan 15, 2023
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Tantura
(2022)
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Joanne Laurier
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Given the current official state of Israeli politics, with a new coalition government that includes a fascist party, Schwarz’s effort took some courage.
Posted Jan 15, 2023
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Farha
(2021)
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Joanne Laurier
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Farha has come under ferocious criticism from Israeli officials, especially when Netflix announced plans to stream the work.
Posted Jan 15, 2023
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4/4
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200 Meters
(2020)
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Joanne Laurier
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200 Meters is the first (and an impressive) feature written and directed by Palestinian-Jordanian Ameen Nayfeh (born 1988). The fiction film ... depicts the relentless cruelty of the Israeli government’s policies toward the Palestinians
Posted Jan 15, 2023
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Triangle of Sadness
(2022)
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David Walsh
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In the new film, reflecting the force of processes too obvious to be ignored, Östlund has expanded his scope. The English-language film is uneven, but its skewering of capitalism is certainly welcome.
Posted Dec 02, 2022
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She Said
(2022)
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David Walsh
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She Said is a bland, stilted work largely without genuine dramatic life or energy. No element of ambiguity or complexity is allowed to intrude. Whatever conceptions and prejudices the viewer enters with, he or she leaves with.
Posted Nov 23, 2022
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Causeway
(2022)
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Joanne Laurier
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Causeway is narrow and shamefully non-committal. Refusing to seriously examine the conflict in which Lynsey suffered her devastating injuries ... the film ends up adapting itself to American militarism and its homicidal operations all over the world.
Posted Nov 23, 2022
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Till
(2022)
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Joanne Laurier
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The filmmakers are incapable of calling on the strongest dramatic forms, of drawing on the noblest ideas—above all, they are not interested in making a universal appeal.
Posted Nov 07, 2022
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2/4
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The Humans
(2021)
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David Walsh
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How does making the work resemble a horror movie add anything to our understanding of the Blakes and their relationships, to each other and to the world? It might be one of those overly clever conceptions that should have been set aside.
Posted Nov 07, 2022
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Cherry
(2021)
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Joanne Laurier
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Cherry is a commendable film, but certainly not without weaknesses. It is limited by its general air of pessimism and resignation.
Posted Nov 01, 2022
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Amsterdam
(2022)
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David Walsh
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It focuses attention on an important historical episode, the effort by elements in the ruling class to organize a coup in 1933–34 against Franklin D. Roosevelt, but severely fails in its treatment of the event as well as its contemporary significance.
Posted Nov 01, 2022
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Gladiator
(2000)
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David Walsh
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Gladiator, directed by Ridley Scott, is enjoyable, as long as it's not taken too seriously... Everything is quite improbable, but professionally done and played to the hilt.
Posted Nov 01, 2022
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The Woman King
(2022)
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Joanne Laurier
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In the case of The Woman King, we have anti-history mobilized in the selfish interests of an upper-middle class milieu, rewriting the past for money and status.
Posted Oct 14, 2022
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On the Rocks
(2020)
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David Walsh
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What could Sofia Coppola possibly be thinking? Why would she make this intensely complacent film?
Posted Sep 22, 2022
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Palmer
(2021)
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Joanne Laurier
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Palmer is a sensitive drama about working class life in contemporary America. Nuanced performances grace this composed and patient film, a relative rarity in present-day cinema.
Posted Sep 22, 2022
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2/4
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The Good Boss
(2021)
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David Walsh
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The Good Boss suffers from superficiality, social and psychological. The characters are efficiently developed but not profoundly. They act more or less as we expect them to. Nothing here is deeply moving or disturbing.
Posted Sep 11, 2022
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2/4
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Fourth of July
(2022)
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David Walsh
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But it is all far too small. If an American filmmaker entitles a work “Fourth of July,” a historically and socially loaded phrase, one has the right to anticipate some sort of broader statement.
Posted Sep 03, 2022
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The Gray Man
(2022)
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David Walsh
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The Gray Man is a very bad, almost instantly forgettable film. What makes things worse in this case is that the filmmakers, the Russo brothers, do possess a degree of perception, talent and imagination.
Posted Aug 16, 2022
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3/4
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7 Prisoners
(2021)
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Joanne Laurier
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7 Prisoners is a deeply disturbing movie, featuring a committed and accomplished cast.
Posted Aug 16, 2022
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3/4
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Joy
(2018)
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Joanne Laurier
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Joy’s cast and crew were clearly committed to exposing a vicious form of exploitation and the social conditions that underpin it.
Posted Aug 16, 2022
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9/10
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Lost Illusions
(2021)
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David Walsh
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Giannoli and Fieschi ... have attempted to absorb Balzac’s novel as a whole, retain its essential structure and gist, while rewriting the actual dialogue, reworking individual situations and changing certain characterizations.
Posted Jul 26, 2022
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