Abby Garnett

About Alex mines old anxiety with new 30-somethings. Lawrence Kasdan's The Big Chill had much to say about the angst of losing touch with your younger self and the noble folly of trying to reclaim it. Since its release in 1983, the dramatic tropes of Kasdan's film — big, nostalgic...

Violette is a film consumed by hunger, as was its heroine, the French writer Violette Leduc: hunger for love, for companionship, for artistic validation. Portrayed with flickering levels of ferocity by the supple-faced Emmanuelle Devos, Leduc forcefully grasps at potential paramours and sucks down cigarettes with the intensity of a...

You have to hand it to James McAvoy, who has made a career out of his amiable, boyish good looks; in Filth, he destroys that image. As Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson, he's a booze-bloated, greasy wreck who appears about 20 years older, all busted capillaries and shit-eating grin. He's not...