Arts & Culture

… The plot’s developments at times could seem tenuous, but I found them totally daring and confident, as though Riley knew the rules of every screenwriting guide and the demand for “realism,” and he said, “Nah, I’m good,” because he had bigger points to make …

The film even confronts its own audience in some ways, as it goes from a tale of three people learning more about their identities, to one about the very nature of human identity itself …

… There’s an urgency and an anger this time around that helps paper over some of the story’s messiness, as well as some of the awkward drama of trying to explain where this whole crazy Purge idea actually came from

The writers, who include Flynn as well as series creator Marti Noxon (Mad Men, UnREAL, Dietland), don’t exactly hit viewers over the head with the retrograde gender politics of small-town America, but those dynamics are firmly on display

Reed and Rudd deliver plenty of the goofy antics we’ve now come to expect from Ant-Man: size-change cock-ups, charming incompetence on the macho bluster front, etc.

At first, Whitney gives off the unpleasant whiff of dirty laundry being aired, as the members of Houston’s inner circle, speaking alone in front of the camera, dish on the family’s secrets

Sorry to Bother You sings in a voice all its own, thanks to the righteous vision of Riley, known for his 1990s hip-hop group the Coup and his vocal support for labor rights