|
|
Pearl
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
A savvy deepening and recontextualising of a must-see scary-movie franchise that's as much about desire, dreams and determination as notching up deaths.
Posted Mar 19, 2023
|
|
|
Meet Me in the Bathroom
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
Affectionate, in the moment, revealing, reverent: Meet Me in the Bathroom hits all of those notes.
Posted Mar 18, 2023
|
|
|
Shazam! Fury of the Gods
(2023)
|
Sarah Ward
|
At least it gave us Mirren, Liu and Zegler, a trio that everyone should wish for, livening up a by-the-numbers affair.
Posted Mar 18, 2023
|
|
|
65
(2023)
|
Sarah Ward
|
The version that treads forth is watchable, but also the most basic version of what it is, what viewers want and why it exists: yes, Adam Driver fighting dinosaurs.
Posted Mar 14, 2023
|
|
|
Scream VI
(2023)
|
Sarah Ward
|
Scream VI is still fun enough as a slasher-comedy-slash-whodunnit; staging that slashing, plus the suspense and sleuthing around it, remains Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett's best Scream-relevant skill.
Posted Mar 14, 2023
|
|
|
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
This is a remarkable doco about an individual, and the others who've cast their shadows upon her, as well as a stirring account of the clash between individuals and power — Poitras' frequent topic of interest, after all.
Posted Mar 14, 2023
|
|
|
To Leslie
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
This isn't a performance courting attention, but one committed to conveying what's swishing and swirling within a tumultuous character whose strengths and missteps are both always in view.
Posted Mar 14, 2023
|
|
|
Empire of Light
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
What a stunning portrayal Colman delivers beside Ward; Hilary was written specifically for her, unsurprisingly, and plays that way at all times.
Posted Mar 14, 2023
|
|
|
Creed III
(2023)
|
Sarah Ward
|
Creed III is no knockout it's still a worthy bout.
Posted Mar 14, 2023
|
|
|
Navalny
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
Usually only Hollywood screenwriters can conjure up a narrative like the one that Navalny has been living, though, typically in a Bourne-style spy thriller.
Posted Mar 14, 2023
|
|
|
Cocaine Bear
(2023)
|
Sarah Ward
|
Killer trailer, filler flick... If someone isn't being torn to pieces — and each death honestly could be anyone, with more and more supporting figures popping up but everyone lucky to be one-note — the film is about as convincing as its clunky CGI.
Posted Feb 26, 2023
|
|
|
Missing
(2023)
|
Sarah Ward
|
The riveting Missing is right on target at grounding its nerves and thrills alike in all that can be uncovered, endured and experienced with your fingers on a keyboard and your eyes staring at your chosen rectangle.
Posted Feb 25, 2023
|
|
|
Aftersun
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
Mescal gets a tilt at Hollywood's night of nights for his efforts, but Corio is just as extraordinary — perhaps more so given that it's her first acting role. Watching the duo together is a marvel.
Posted Feb 24, 2023
|
|
|
Close
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
This isn't an overplayed picture — understatement is one of its key and crucial elements — but it's expertly attuned to what it's like to have a kindred spirit in your youth, and to the immense void left when that's gone.
Posted Feb 24, 2023
|
|
|
Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania
(2023)
|
Sarah Ward
|
Anyone who fears that too many blockbusters are becoming too similar won't feel fortunate while watching... The MCU is going massive on Kang, patently; if only it'd kept the Ant-Man pictures small.
Posted Feb 24, 2023
|
|
|
Women Talking
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
More than a decade has passed between Polley's third film and Women Talking, and cinema has been all the poorer for it. How rich and resonant — how raw, sensitive and potent at the same time — her latest directorial effort proves.
Posted Feb 24, 2023
|
|
|
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey
(2023)
|
Sarah Ward
|
Slathers on well-executed gore, but isn't anything approaching good or so-bad-it's-good.
Posted Feb 24, 2023
|
|
|
The Son
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
If only The Son also spent more time showing rather than telling — indeed, with its talk-heavy screenplay always betraying the story's stage origins, it devotes almost all of its efforts to telling.
Posted Feb 24, 2023
|
|
|
Spoiler Alert
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
When it gets welcomely thorny — when it feels specific to Ausiello and Cowan's 13-year-relationship, laying bare its early awkwardness and many imperfections — it's a richer movie.
Posted Feb 24, 2023
|
|
|
Corsage
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
Against restrained period fare and reverent on-screen biographies, Corsage is an act of rebellion, too.
Posted Feb 24, 2023
|
|
|
Magic Mike's Last Dance
(2023)
|
Sarah Ward
|
When there's genuine heat to Magic Mike's Last Dance, it sizzles from that choreography and that core duo. Everything else too often feels like foreplay at its most routine and half-hearted.
Posted Feb 24, 2023
|
|
|
Knock at the Cabin
(2023)
|
Sarah Ward
|
While its questions about what we choose to put our faith in and why are as obvious as one late easy reveal, Knock at the Cabin earns two firm beliefs: in Shyamalan messing with vacations again, and in Bautista at his best.
Posted Feb 24, 2023
|
|
|
The Whale
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
It should come as little surprise that Aronofsky's eighth film is at its finest when it lets Fraser, Chau and Sink verbally bounce off of each other.
Posted Feb 24, 2023
|
|
|
What's Love Got to Do with It?
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
Thrives on the charisma of its leads. It has to. Lily James and Shazad Latif are nicely cast, but they're also all-so-crucially required to help patch over the movie's flagrant formula.
Posted Feb 24, 2023
|
|
|
You Can Go Now!
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
Behrendt's approach is straightforward, but made dynamic and gripping through her subject, his story, the history behind both and the snippets focused on.
Posted Feb 24, 2023
|
|
|
Tár
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
The least surprising aspect of Tár is also its most essential: Cate Blanchett being as phenomenal as she's ever been, plus more.
Posted Jan 26, 2023
|
|
|
Skinamarink
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
Smartly understands how our imaginations can conjure up our biggest fears from nothing but the unknown, and gets ample mileage out of putting that idea into practice.
Posted Jan 26, 2023
|
|
|
Babylon
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
A relentless and ravenous movie that's always a lot, not just in length, but is dazzling (and also very funny) when it clicks.
Posted Jan 26, 2023
|
|
|
Emily
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
To watch Emily is to feel as feverish as O'Connor contends that Emily did, or might've, or could've.
Posted Jan 26, 2023
|
|
|
Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre
(2023)
|
Sarah Ward
|
Doesn't venture beyond mixing Ritchie's beloved bag of tricks together, reading like an effort to split the difference between his last two movies: The Gentlemen and effective revenge thriller Wrath of Man.
Posted Jan 26, 2023
|
|
|
M3GAN
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
It's winking, knowing, silly, satirical, slick and highly engineered all at once, overtly pushing buttons and demanding a response — and, thankfully, mostly earning it.
Posted Jan 26, 2023
|
|
|
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
(2021)
|
Sarah Ward
|
Sweet, endearing, happily silly, often hilarious and deeply insightful movie... an all-round gem.
Posted Jan 26, 2023
|
|
|
The Fabelmans
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
This is a sincere, perceptive and potent movie about how movies act as a mirror — and a vividly shot and engagingly performed one, complete with a pitch-perfect late cameo that's pure cinephile heaven — whether we're watching or creating them.
Posted Jan 26, 2023
|
|
|
A Man Called Otto
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
When a feature needs a good-natured supporting character to make its audience care about its hostile protagonist, that isn't a great sign.
Posted Jan 26, 2023
|
|
|
Blueback
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
An unflinchingly earnest movie about valuing the natural world and stopping its decimation, as told with visual splendour that helps make its point through spectacular below-the-sea imagery, yet struggling with nuance.
Posted Jan 26, 2023
|
|
|
Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
Content with staying in expected territory... makes for a rousing yet routine addition to the music biopic canon.
Posted Jan 26, 2023
|
|
|
The Lost King
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
Everything feels simplified and smoothed out here, given too many quirks and rendered a tad cartoonish.
Posted Jan 26, 2023
|
|
|
Triangle of Sadness
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
Money can't buy you a solution to basic bodily functions when food poisoning and seasickness strike, and doesn't this scathingly entertaining flick revel in that notion at its most gleefully gross.
Posted Jan 26, 2023
|
|
|
The Banshees of Inisherin
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
Simply watching Farrell's eyebrows as Pádraic faces his changing circumstances is entertaining, emotional and evocative; the depths and shades he can relay with a twitch, many actors can't muster with their entire bodies.
Posted Jan 26, 2023
|
|
|
Avatar: The Way of Water
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
Sans water, that annoying motion-smoothing soap-opera look bubbles up, gimmickry sets in, and Pandora and the Na'vi appear far, far less visually spectacular.
Posted Jan 26, 2023
|
|
|
White Noise
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
This bold, playful survey of existential malaise via middle-class suburbia and academia overflows with life, death, consumerism and the cacophony of chaos echoing through our every living moment.
Posted Jan 26, 2023
|
|
|
Roald Dahl's Matilda the Musical
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
The library full of charm remains, as does a story that's always relatable for all ages. Horrors and hilarity, a heroine for the ages, a hulking villain of a headmistress, the beloved Miss Honey, telekinetic powers: they're all also accounted for.
Posted Jan 26, 2023
|
|
|
Stars at Noon
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
Playing their parts with the requisite spark, Qualley and Alwyn melt stickily into each other, and viewers watching take their lead with the movie.
Posted Jan 26, 2023
|
|
|
All Quiet on the Western Front
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
Almost a century after it first hit the page, this tale has lost none of its power, urgency or relevance — an indictment upon humanity that Berger's iteration silently but clearly stresses.
Posted Jan 26, 2023
|
|
|
Violent Night
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
Knows how to make its familiar parts gleam when it wants to, but that isn't often enough.
Posted Dec 04, 2022
|
|
|
Strange World
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
Even by Disney animation standards, saying that this flick is visibly dazzling is a hefty understatement
Posted Dec 04, 2022
|
|
|
Seriously Red
(2021)
|
Sarah Ward
|
Seriously Red doesn't need to beg its viewers to have an entertaining time.
Posted Dec 04, 2022
|
|
|
Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
Surreal, tinged with sadness, bittersweet, beautiful: that's the film that del Toro has chiseled.
Posted Dec 04, 2022
|
|
|
Bones and All
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
So rich, lingering and piercing in its emotions, characters and ideas that it gnaws on you after viewing.
Posted Dec 04, 2022
|
|
|
The Menu
(2022)
|
Sarah Ward
|
A savage, savvy and scathingly amusing satire about coveting $1250-a-head meals but letting the workers behind them slice, steam, stir and sweat through upscale kitchen drudgery.
Posted Dec 04, 2022
|
