Marks for message, but as cinema it was overlong, lacking drama and repetitive–too many shots of an empty school corridor. Although it won the Oscar, I can think of four or five better documentaries at the recent SB Film Festival.
Director Baz Luhrman atones for his dismal 2022 biopic Elvis with a joyful homage based on concert and rehearsal footage from the early 1970s, when Elvis was the greatest showman of our lifetime. The documentary plays his songs complete and gives full play to his twinkling smile and kidding personality. There are just enough interjections of […]
“Weird” is too mild a descriptor for this Yorgas Lanthimos-Emma Stone-Jesse Plemons excursion into George Saunders-like surreality. Nothing makes sense in a very consistent way, and there is a sobering moral in a final scene that must have doubled the production budget (unless it was AI-generated, which would also be appropriate). While the film was […]
Sometimes you just long for an old-fashioned movie with a linear plot, dialogue you can understand, a satisfying story arc and a character or two you can like or even connect with emotionally. Instead, Kristen Stewart’s first directorial effort seemed designed to establish her bona fides as an artsy auteur with the portrait of an […]
Having seen all the contenders except Bugonia (the sour taste of Poor Things still lingers), I’m ready to anoint my Oscar choices for 2025, limiting myself to the official nominees: Best Actor Ethan Hawke. An easy decision. He held the screen the entire movie, captivated us although he wasn’t attractive by any measure, and so inhabited the […]
If a comedy, not funny. If a drama, not dramatic. If social commentary, no comment. After an hour we looked at each other, mouthed the word “stupid,” and departed. The culture gap between us and this Korean Oscar submission must have been too wide.
A one-note dramatization of a real call from besieged Gaza was short on modulation, and how one responds to the lead character’s conduct will depend on the viewer, but any film that humanizes Palestinians deserves celebration.
How to pick a Top Ten–and what does “Top Ten” mean, anyway? I’m in no position to pick the “best” movies; so my choices must be personal favorites and, on a further level of subjectivity, on the particular day I saw them. Some would question how I could pick Americana., a film that was barely noticed […]
What a feel this movie gives for Brazil in 1977 – its people, its culture – in just its first 40 minutes! In the hands of a master filmmaker, I sat back, eager for the ride, with Wagner Moura as the easygoing lead. Then the plot happens and muddies the picture. People are enemies of […]
Remarkably filmed sub rosa in Iran, Accident told a story of torture and revenge with compelling directness and lots of close-ups. Some of the set pieces went on too long, which drained some suspense, but that may have been Jafar Panahi’s intention. (Would the Golden Globes consider this a comedy?) A bit threadbare for Best Picture, […]
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