Mia Wasikowska may be a damsel but she’s certainly not in distress in the Zellners brothers’ quirky, revisionist Western. “Damsel” is a sly feminist manifesto disguised as a shaggy, amiable hangout movie. And it features another wonderfully weird performance from Robert Pattinson, who continues to take chances post-“Twilight.” My review, at...
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Reviews
RogerEbert.com — Ocean’s 8
“Ocean’s 8” is a complete blast of a heist movie featuring an all-star cast of formidable actresses in to-die-for designer gowns. But beneath the glitz and glamour of this sequel lies a statement about the way women still unfortunately tend to be underestimated. The entire cast enjoys great chemistry, but...
Read moreRogerEbert.com — A Kid Like Jake
“A Kid Like Jake” handles a complicated topic with sensitivity and grace. This is not an after-school special. In depicting the life of a Brooklyn couple (Jim Parsons and Claire Danes) whose kindergarten-bound son, Jake (Leo James Davis), enjoys dressing in tutus and pretending he’s a Disney princess, director Silas...
Read moreRogerEbert.com — Show Dogs
I’m no film snob. I’m down for a good live-action, talking-animal movie, and it doesn’t even need to be something Oscar-worthy like “Babe.” But “Show Dogs” is terrible. It’s essentially “Miss Congeniality” in the dog show world, with cheesy visual effects, hackneyed gross-out gags for the kids and lame jokes...
Read moreRogerEbert.com — Revenge
Watching a brutal, bloody rape-revenge fantasy may not be your cup of tea. And I get that. But “Revenge” is the film we need right now from a filmmaker we need right now: French writer-director Coralie Fargeat, making her stunning feature debut. She upends your expectations of the genre and...
Read moreRogerEbert.com — Tully
In the same vein as 2007’s “Juno” and 2011’s “Young Adult,” “Tully” unearths uncomfortable truths in a wry, wise way. The latest collaboration between director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody features Cody’s hyper-verbal brand of snark, cynicism and subtle poignancy, but it’s tinged with the wistful perspective that comes...
Read moreRogerEbert.com — Mrs. Hyde
A timid high school physics teacher gets zapped by lightning in a freak lab accident. When she comes to, she finds she has acquired strange new abilities and a burst of confidence that allow her to seize control of her life like never before. It’s the stuff of a 1980s high-concept,...
Read moreRogerEbert.com — I Feel Pretty
I have mixed feelings about “I Feel Pretty,” a high-concept, modern-day fairy tale. Amy Schumer stars as an insecure woman who suffers a head injury and believes she’s been magically transformed into the gorgeous bombshell she’s always dreamed of becoming — even though she’s unchanged on the outside. It’s a lot...
Read moreRogerEbert.com — Borg vs. McEnroe
The performances are strong, particularly from Shia LaBeouf as John McEnroe — with the undeniable juiciness of watching one notoriously volatile person playing another. But this telling of the titanic showdown between McEnroe and Bjorn Borg at the 1980 Wimbledon championships is frustratingly superficial, and it does a lot of...
Read moreRogerEbert.com — Where Is Kyra?
Michelle Pfeiffer gives the performance of her long and eclectic career in “Where Is Kyra?” (Even better than “Grease 2,” which I love with zero irony.) Pfeiffer stars as a desperate, unemployed woman who employs increasingly dangerous tactics to avoid being evicted after the death of her ailing mother. It’s...
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