A short story of a movie (unlike, say, Kelly Reichardt’s earlier period Western, Meek’s Cutoff), which tries to absorb us into the gentle friendship between a sweet but slow trail cook and a more ambitious Chinese frontier entrepreneur. Their business of selling dolly-cakes could also be read as a metaphor for American capitalism: the drive […]
Finally, a serious movie. And I mean, serious. Beautifully photographed empty landscapes of the American West set a metaphorical scene for the bleak nomadic life of the widowed, childless Fern, living in a van, subsisting on minimum-wage temporary jobs when she can find them, meeting other nomads but resisting any close connections. I can’t say […]
Not fun. Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman play characters that are so unremittingly unpleasant you almost don’t want them onscreen, and the usually reliable Jeremy Shamos is just as bad–that is, sickly fawning–in the other direction. The movie comes across as a play: e.g., stop the action while a character tells his life story. The […]
Exhilarating. The story combines George Floyd and the Chicago 7 in 1970 London, and I was stunned at the end to learn it was also based on a true story. Steve McQueen creates a foreign world–a community of Caribbean immigrants in Notting Hill–and populates it with people we believe in and come to care deeply […]
I have no idea what someone not familiar with the titular book would think of this scrapbook of moments culled from its pages, but maybe there isn’t such a one who would be watching. As it is, we are left to compare the movie’s impersonations of the memorable characters, from Uriah Heep to Mr. Micawber […]
Everything you need to know about one of my favorite groups in less than two hours, this documentary was loving but not fawning, with samples of their best songs (out of the 1,000 they wrote). Archival footage was mixed in good proportion with current interviews, and I couldn’t take my eyes off the Greek-god looks […]
The punch line, of course, is that Dick Johnson isn’t dead in this loving documentary by his daughter Kirsten. She uses his growing dementia as an excuse to grapple with his inevitable end, in ways it might occur (but probably won’t), how it will affect people and where he will go (which he clearly won’t). […]
Bravo to the journalists of Sports Gazette who doggedly exposed scandal in the Romanian health system. Bravo to the young Minister of Health who tried to clean up the scandal. And bravo to the filmmaker who somehow managed to record the private deliberations of both. But as a film, this came across as an amateurish […]
A thoroughly unpleasant two hours of snark, cynicism, cigarettes and a drunken boor, with nary a witty line to be heard nor a noble man in sight. Mank’s wife and secretary, who also look alike, are the only people who exude any decency. The story is a “who-cares?,” and it goes back-and-forth with flashbacks to […]
I can’t gainsay the quality of the acting and the production, but the ten episodes of Season 4 left an uneven impression. Each episode was its own self-contained story. Those that mixed British politics with Royal Family matters–such as the superb finale–were deeply rewarding. Those that focused on the Royals’ dysfunction–such as Princess Margaret’s search […]
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