The Pale Blue Eye Is So Incoherent, It’s Almost Impressive
There’s a real dearth of Hollywood adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s work. Unfortunately, The Pale Blue Eye is far from the film that Poe deserves.
204 Articles by: Eileen Jones
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Eileen Jones is a film critic at Jacobin and author of Filmsuck, USA. She also hosts a podcast called Filmsuck.
You Don’t Have to Suffer Through Avatar: The Way of Water. Just Don’t.
For three whole hours, Avatar: The Way of Water evokes Important Issues — imperialism, colonialism, racism, sexism, ransacking the environment for commodifiable resources — in the silliest, shallowest way possible.
Babylon Is So Bad It Will Hurt Your Brain
It’s not really clear what Damien Chazelle is trying to accomplish in his latest, Babylon. The movie is so awful that he should probably be banished from Hollywood.
Emancipation Is an Action Melodrama That Is Highly Missable
There aren’t enough films depicting runaway slaves fighting off Southern racists on the way to freedom. So when that premise is wasted on a terrible movie, as it is in Will Smith’s Emancipation, it’s a great tragedy.
The New Robert Downey Sr Documentary Is More Annoying Than Avant-Garde
Robert Downey Jr’s documentary tribute to his father, Sr., wants to mimic his dad’s avant-garde filmmaking. But the film lacks coherence, and its subject and filmmaker’s obscene wealth gets in the way of making that case.
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio Is Morbid and Off-Putting
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is handsome and well-crafted. But the film’s intertwining of traditional Catholicism, Fascism, and dysfunctional families with gooey sentimentality makes a stew of ingredients that don’t go well together.
Violent Night Is a Ho-Hum Holiday Hit
With Violent Night, we were promised a deranged, Santa-meets-Die–Hard flick shorn of holiday schmaltz. Instead, the action-comedy just another soppy movie about the Christmas spirit.
Why is Netflix Giving Us a Wednesday Addams Who Wants to Feel Feels?
Netflix’s new Addams Family show puts Wednesday’s teenaged emotional life front and center — and suffers for it.
Before They Ran the Reds Out of the Studios
The screwball comedy The Devil and Miss Jones exemplifies how pro-worker Hollywood was just on the eve of McCarthyism.
The Fabelmans, Steven Spielberg’s Portrait of Himself, Is a Self-Indulgent Slog
Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical The Fabelmans is a dull, self-indulgent victory lap for the most victorious filmmaker in history.
Glass Onion Is the Rare Movie for the Whole Family That Doesn’t Suck
Director Rian Johnson follows up on his 2019 crowd-pleaser Knives Out with Glass Onion, this time taking aim at an Elon Musk–esque billionaire and his frenemies. Unfortunately, Netflix has ensured you only have a week to see it with an actual crowd.
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story Can Salvage Your Holiday Weekend
Written by Weird Al himself and starring Daniel Radcliffe, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is a biopic parody that mocks the prestige form at every turn. It may very well save you from the worst interludes of family togetherness this weekend.
Now Do the Much Better, Real-Life Version of My Policeman
The new movie My Policeman, starring Harry Styles, is inspired by novelist E. M. Forster’s 40-year relationship with policeman Robert Buckingham that began in 1930. The details of that romance are stirring — much more so than what we get in the film.
Triangle of Sadness Is as Absurd as 21st-Century Capitalism Is
Triangle of Sadness is more than a little over the top at times. But so what? Unlike every other movie at the theaters, it’s over the top in its scathing portrayal of the ugly realities of contemporary inequality.
Go See The Banshees of Inisherin Right Now
In Bruges’s director Martin McDonagh reunites with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson for a story of an Irish friendship gone sour. And it’s easily the best new movie I’ve seen in forever.
Why Would Netflix Bury a Film as Wonderfully Imaginative as Wendell & Wild?
Wendell & Wild is gorgeous, daringly creative, and stunning to watch. Yet Netflix has put almost no effort or resources into promoting the film.
The Killer Isn’t the Only Murderer in The Good Nurse
In The Good Nurse, a serial killer’s murders are disguised by the frequently nightmarish workings of hospitals in a for-profit health care system.
Tár Is Stuck in the Muck of Its Own Highbrow Artiness
Todd Field wants you to think his new movie Tár is a critique of the pretentiousness of the high art world. But the movie is actually trapped in that suffocating world and can’t find a way out.
They Live Is a Timeless Anti-Capitalist Horror Classic
It’s never a bad time to revisit John Carpenter’s 1988 classic They Live, a hilarious sci-fi thriller that skewers the inequality of the neoliberal era and offers an iconic depiction of capitalist ideology.
Amsterdam Is a Mess and a Bomb and Also Sort of Interesting
Credit to David O. Russell for trying to make a movie, Amsterdam, that’s unique and compelling. He didn’t really succeed, but at least he tried.