REVIEW: The Woman King [2022]

Relentlessly, we will fight. Nine times out of ten when a white actor visits Africa, learns a “cool” historical detail, and returns to Hollywood pitching it as the “next big thing” logline, disaster strikes if a finished product even gets produced. Maria Bello is therefore the lone exception considering she did exactly that here. A 2015 trip to Beninā€”former site of the Dahomey kingdomā€”brought with it an education on the West African region’s famed all-women warrior regiment known as the Agojie. It went around town, got passed over or lowballed…

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TIFF22 REVIEW: How to Blow Up a Pipeline [2023]

If the law will not punish you, then we will. Logan (Lukas Gage) meets Shawn (Marcus Scribner) holding a red covered book within a section of a bookstore that both men are trolling for likeminded individuals. Our assumption is that the color means he’s leafing through Andreas Malm‘s nonfiction How to Blow Up a Pipeline in which the author argues for sabotage as a legitimate form of climate activism while also criticizing the pacifism and fatalism that has otherwise dominated the conversation instead. It makes sense then why Logan smirks…

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REVIEW: The Batman [2022]

No more lies. It’s been twenty years since the murder of his parents. Two since he put on the cowl. Gotham still doesn’t know what to think of the costume, but the fear it has placed inside the hearts of criminals cannot be overstated. Violence only seems to increase, though, and Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattinson) wonders if his presence as a vigilante seeking vengeance has done anything beyond giving offenders another figure of “justice” to run from. Saving a helpless man from a gang on Halloween, only for the victim…

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