A directorial tour de force from Sean Baker, this tale of an erotic dancer caught up with a Russian oligarch’s son trafficked in extreme after extreme without losing touch with reality and very funny moments without descending to farce. It was, however, rather longer than necessary: the opening act of excess carried on well after […]
Visually sumptuous–those cardinals’ robes plus the Sistine Chapel!–but the story and characters never grabbed me. Ralph Fiennes was all anguish and emotion, making me long for Anthony Hopkins. John Lithgow, Stanley Tucci and comparable Italian and African(?) stars just made me wonder what they were doing at the Vatican. The plot, too, was cardboard thin, […]
A well made movie about the awkward moments of ninth grade from the perspective of a first-generation Chinese immigrant. Unfortunately, the ninth grader at the center of everything, a surrogate for the director Sean Wang, is neither charming nor interesting, so the viewer emotional involvement is missing. And ninth grade, after all, holds only so […]
As with her (much better) plays, Annie Baker’s film debut consists of people talking, and figuring themselves out. Unfortunately, all they talk about is their relationships, none of which are that interesting. This is sort of an Inside Out 2 but with sort of grownups.
Our 7-year-old granddaughter said she enjoyed it, although the jokes were coming faster than we could easily catch. I think I liked the first film better, but that may be because the early teenage years just aren’t fun for anyone.
A lovely, gentle romance between a charming and gorgeous Icelandic man and a lovely and demure Japanese woman, told through flashbacks to 1969 London from a 2020 present. Besides whetting my appetite for Japanese cuisine, the film almost made me nostalgic for the days of Covid lockdown.
If you’re going to have an affair, it’s probably better not to have it with your teenage stepson. That seemed to be the message of this very French film: lots of relatable characters, long takes, sex and bad decisions. It would have been easier to take if Theo, the 16-year-old bundle of animal magnetism, had […]
A disjointed melange of mostly still photos for a documentary that purported a big story–scandal at the Venice Biennale–that never showed up. What was Leo Castelli’s involvement? Who was Rauschenberg’s competition? Wasn’t he the “best painter” there? What did his later ventures–e.g., ROCI–have to do with anything? Why talking heads who arrived on the scene […]
A sober and sobering account of a Syrian refugee family’s attempt to reach Sweden via Belarus and Poland, two countries that kicked them around, and worse, like political footballs. Agnieszka Holland crafts her film, shot in black-and-white after an opening view of, presumably, the green border, in chapters told from the perspectives of 1. the […]
A movie based on a book of photographs is a novel concept (if you pardon the anti-pun). Accordingly, it describes a place and time and a particular subset of people: bikeriders. Enough happens to keep the story moving, but without the dramatic tension of a plot-driven film. It’s watching people. And what people! Jodi Comer […]
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