Entries by Bob Marshall

The Innocent – 8

A cleverly plotted, very funny crime caper peopled with delightfully idiosyncratic characters. Every moment is fun an the relationships are touching. Only in French cinema would the robbery target be a shipment of caviar.

Past Lives – 6.5

A sweet love story, although how sweet depends on one’s view of actress Greta Lee, whom I found more off-putting than charming. Maybe it’s a prejudice against Asian actresses (see Hong Chau in Showing Up and whoever was in Crazy Rich Asians and Everything Everywhere All At Once), but I missed the vulnerability of Julia Roberts, et al. […]

Vengeance – 6.5

A fun cross-cultural spoof, with a bright-lights New Yorker writer turning his trip to West Texas into a podcast, like he’s visiting a zoo, only to find that the animals can not only talk but have a lot on their minds.  The lesson in self-awareness is less interesting than the characters he runs into, and if […]

Showing Up – 4

A textbook example of “slow cinema,” which features long takes and nothing happening, Showing Up does not much more than its title. Michelle Williams plays a joyless depressive from a dysfunctional family who jousts with an unpleasantly aggressive Hong Chau. The main plot point involves a pigeon, which for director Kelly Reichardt is a step down […]

Close to Vermeer – 8

A small movie, like the best Vermeer paintings, and if not a similar masterpiece, one that told a fun story with clarity and the borrowed beauty of all the Vermeers. Just showing close-ups of the paintings in the Rijksmuseum exhibition would have been worth the admission price, but beyond the final show were two subplots […]

Broadway 5/23

Ladies ruled the stage for our spring visit to New York, with the Tony going to Jodie Comer in Prima Facie, a legal delicacy and one-woman tour de force. Jessica Chastain was formidable in a necessarily smaller but no less affecting role in A Doll’s House. Jessica Hecht and Laura Linney complemented each other in […]

You Hurt My Feelings – 7.5

A movie of small moments, two couples in Manhattan with regular Manhattan jobs, like we used to get from Woody Allen. No guffaws, but lots of little laughs and a pleasant ride along a low-key plot. For me, Julia Louis-Dreyfus was too much “Elaine” to be convincing or particularly interesting and the happy ending was […]

Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie – 6.5

Cleverly put together by Davis Guggenheim, this assisted autobiography features movie clips, simulated scenes and documentary footage on an armature of director-subject interview. All credit to Michael J. Fox for exposing himself and publicizing the plight of Parkinson’s patients, and he is ever charming and captivating. I still felt something was missing, that we were […]

Air – 8

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are having a great time, and the audience does too. It’s an inspirational story about Nike taking a chance on Michael Jordan as a rookie. There’s not much subtlety, but what’s wrong with that? We already know the ending and most of what happens along the way; our pleasure comes […]

The Lost King – 8

Hip Hooray for Sally Hawkins and Ye Merrie Olde England (or Scotland)! So much fun to watch an old-fashioned movie with plot, good guys and bad guys, real-life situations and nary an art-house pretension. Instructive too, as it was “based on a true story,” although director Stephen Frears took plenty of license, as did Shakespeare […]