Maybe if you don’t find 9-year-old Jesse a spoiled brat; or Uncle Johnny’s “job” interviewing children rather silly; or the scene changes from Detroit to Los Angeles to New York to New Orleans rather pointless; or the history of brother-sister conflict between Johnny and Viv less than interesting, then maybe you will be charmed by […]
Given Jane Campion’s track record as a director and the movie’s source in a novel, I have to assume that every twist in the relatively slow-paced drama had a purpose, but the film left me scratching my head with the following questions: What turned Phil from the meanest, nastiest character in recent film into a […]
A haunting film, with Kodi Smit-McPhee as the spectral Peter, Benedict Cumberbatch as the half-crazy Phil and Kirsten Dunst as the drunken and lost Rose. Jesse Plemons plays Phil’s appropriately bovine brother George, wandering aimlessly outside the action. The superb cinematography, featuring beautifully empty New Zealand landscapes, made me wish, as with Nomadland last year, that […]
Good music and a clever production – at one point a musical within a musical within a musical – marred mainly by an annoyingly frenetic Andrew Garfield in the lead. For the first half hour I feared I was back In the Heights, but the movie slowly grew on me and charmed me by the end, […]
A strange black-and-white, in every sense, picture of the 1930s, with a lack of subtlety and artistry mimicking films in the ’30s – was that intentional? Tessa Thompson’s character was nervous every minute – and she was in every minute – striking a Hitchcockian note that eclipsed whatever social point may have been intended.
After a clever opening sending up French culture and The New Yorker, the movie devolved into four unrelated vignettes that seemed an homage to that magazine’s pieces in the ’70s that went on and on, lacking drama or point. I realize Wes Anderson is a cult taste, but I don’t see how he continues to […]
A delightful snapshot of a pivotal time for one young boy growing up in Belfast. The well-publicized fact that the boy was based on director Kenneth Branagh eliminated any anxiety that the story would turn out well, which allowed us to sit back and enjoy spending time with this family, played by the estimable Judi […]
Harvey Keitel’s performance as a wizened Meyer Lansky rates an “A”; everything else in this movie gets a “D.” Sam Worthington as an insecure, barely competent writer is a misguided role that is painful to watch, and all the flashback scenes are cartoon cliches. In all, a very pale copy of Scorsese’s The Irishman.
(TV) Remarkable performances by Benedict Cumberbatch and, more pleasingly, Claire Foy, but one wonders, why make a movie of this? Perhaps if one was British and familiar with the cat illustrations of the title character it would be more interesting to see the dysfunctional family he came from, or marvel at the delusional nature of […]
(Broadway Theater) This was a masterpiece of stagecraft, with three actors and one revolving set telling the 163-year story of the rise and fall of Lehman Brothers, from immigrant purveyors of fabric in Alabama to a bankrupt New York financial giant. The acting was beyond impeccable: Simon Russell Beale could portray anyone, and did, and […]
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