Ben Affleck’s Air Is a Deranged Corporate Folktale About a Sneaker
Air’s origin story about the Michael Jordan–endorsed sneaker is far too high on its own supply.
395 Article(s) by: Eileen Jones
Eileen Jones is a film critic at Jacobin, host of the Filmsuck podcast, and author of Filmsuck, USA.
Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations Gets a Gritty 21st Century Reboot
Steven Knight’s new adaptation of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations adds drug addiction, the slave trade and even sadomasochistic sex. But lurid flourishes alone can’t save this adaptation.
John Wick: Chapter 4 Is the Bloody Finale We’ve Been Waiting For
In John Wick: Chapter 4, Keanu Reeves’s puppy-avenging assassin returns for one last fever dream of violence and mayhem, giving viewers a final chance to watch John Wick seek the kind of revenge on the wealthy and all-powerful that we all dream about.
Emily Is Not the Biopic Emily Brontë Deserves
Emily Brontë is one of the most uniquely brilliant women writers who ever lived, the perfect subject for a feminist biopic. She deserves better than the shallow pop feminism of the new movie Emily.
Party Down Is Back and Starkly Funny About Our Terrible Times
The first two seasons of Party Down were both honest and affectionate as the series satirized the lives of Hollywood aspirants working dead-end jobs. The show’s long-delayed third season retains that winning formula.
65 Treats Bad Health Insurance as a Permanent Factor Across Space and Time
While 65 starring Adam Driver isn’t a good movie, it does paint a dystopian portrait of terrible health insurance across the universe that is, unfortunately for us Americans, all too believable.
Audiences Crave Gruesome Black Comedy. Cocaine Bear Delivers.
Cocaine Bear, a pretty mediocre black comedy about a bear that goes on a cocaine-fueled rampage in 1980s Georgia, is wildly successful with critics and audiences alike. It’s testament to a real craving for dark, gruesome, off-the-chain laughs right now.
Hello Tomorrow! Is Old-Hat Retrofuturism
Apple’s new series Hello Tomorrow! tries to milk Mad Men postwar pathos from a Jetsons premise. But “difficult men” prestige TV has run out of gas.
Women Talking’s Pop Feminism Can’t Confront the Messy Reality of Women’s Oppression
Sarah Polley’s film Women Talking depicts the brutal true story of rape in a Mennonite colony. It’s a poor fit for the oversimplified, “you go, girl” feminist message of its framing.
Knock at the Cabin Summons a Half-Baked Apocalypse
M. Night Shyamalan’s latest low-budget horror movie, Knock at the Cabin, is so overstuffed with exposition that even the end of the world is a letdown.
Poker Face Is the Working-Class Columbo We’ve Been Waiting For
Rian Johnson and Natasha Lyonne’s new detective show, Poker Face, is a brilliant working-class riff on Knives Out.
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.
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.