With so many presumptive winners already in place, thanks to industry scuttlebutt and numerous awards from critics and industry groups, it is the nomination announcements that offer modest surprises and merit discussion. And with one movie, Oppenheimer, so clearly superior to the rest of the field, the Oscar ceremony itself will tend to boring; so […]
Recommended mainly for the performance by Annette Bening (so much better than Emma Stone’s), who created a character that neatly meshed with the archival footage of the eponymous marathon swimmer. The story of inhuman endurance was catnip for directors Chin/Vasarhelyi, after Meru, Free Solo and Rescue. Their problem here is that swimming from Cuba to Key […]
A sick movie. The fantasy sets of 19th century European cities were fun, especially Dickens’s London, but there was nothing to enjoy in the rest of the two hours and twenty minutes of ugliness. The story was beyond absurd and if that was to make a point, I surely missed it. Emma Stone’s Golden Globe […]
An artwork by master director Wim Wenders about the unique and overwhelming art of Anselm Kiefer, for my money the greatest living artist. The 3-D projection floats us into the world of Kiefer’s sculpture, architecture and deeply perspective paintings. We see hints of his artmaking technique: slabbing on paint (or tar?), pouring lead, blowtorching vegetal […]
This hand-drawn animated feature by the 83-year-old Hayao Miyazaki, purportedly the “most expensive film” ever made in Japan, is visually breathtaking. The movie’s first half, when young Mahito is taken to the country estate of his new mother, captures everything I saw and felt in my high-school summer in Japan, with a landscape from Yoshida […]
An engaging cast of caricatures tickles some serious subjects in the first (or at least best) Black-Lives-Matters-Culture-Page-backlash film of the year. I’m generally uneasy watching someone pretending to be someone he isn’t and experienced that discomfort here, but it all worked out in the clever end, which added an additional meta layer on Cord Jefferson’s […]
“Bizarre,” was my constant thought as I watched this story unfold three times, a la Norman Conquests or, more fittingly I suppose, Rashomon. What was it about, and why should I care? A boyhood crush? An obsessed mother? A poorly run elementary school? The difficulties of being a school teacher in modern society? Director Kore-eda purposely withheld […]
This is Napoleon for the racing-car world. Adam Driver gives a joyless impersonation of Enzo Ferrari that is the lugubrious equal of Joaquin Phoenix’s leaden Corsican. Penelope Cruz provides the only glimmer of life, as did Vanessa Kirby, playing the feisty but disgruntled and left-behind wife. The car-racing scenes recall the violence and senseless deaths […]
I think this Timothee Chalamet is going to be a star! The plot is beyond absurd, but the production values are excellent and the six-year-old with me was enthralled. (Then again it was only her second movie.) Calah Lane (Noodle) was a charmer, and the three minutes with Sally Hawkins gave me more pleasure than […]
Spare. Simple. Sweet. Director Aki Kaurismaki’s visual vocabulary sets the mood: images are planar, geometric, frill-less, close-up, held still. There is no recession into space until the final shot. The world is bleak: colors are drab, jobs are mundane, the outside world, via radio, is death in Ukraine. The supporting cast are notably unattractive–overweight, dour, […]
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