Entries by Bob Marshall

Train Dreams – 6

Sort of a Nomadland for loggers, this story of man’s life is simple, maybe too simple, and he’s simple too, but a nice guy who never hurt anyone. The movie goes off the rails, so to speak, toward the end, which makes you realize it’s based on a novella, not a screenplay. Meant to be moving, […]

Sirat – 7.8

Spain’s submission to the Oscars is a trip, in many senses. Like many trips it doesn’t come with a meaning, but it’s an unforgettable experience. The booming sound of a rave in the desert, a wild drive to where across emptiness, the shock of death–this is the setting for getting to know a small group […]

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You – 7.8

A spectacular Rose Byrne falls deeper and deeper down a rabbit hole of personal calamity until there’s no way out and director Mary Bronstein turns the ending over to deus ex machina so we won’t go home totally depressed. As an intensely focused one-person drama, although Conan O’Brien and ASAP Rocky are good in supporting […]

Jay Kelly – 7.9

A smart and entertaining romp with something fun every two minutes, smartly employing a cast of 80. Writer-director Noah Baumbach is a star. George Clooney is the meta lead, playing a handsome movie star (Jay Kelly even sounds like George Clooney), which meant I always saw him as George Clooney, acting, which made me less […]

Hamnet – 6.5

Two hours of Jessie Buckley is a treat–what an actress!–but the movie is a bit of an unmodulated slog, careening from dramatic incident to dramatic incident. None of it would matter, of course, if it wasn’t William Shakespeare we were watching (and if you hadn’t read the book you might not realize who “Will” is […]

Bruce Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere – 7

I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t feel sorry for Bruce, which seemed to be the point of this film. Six years after appearing on the cover of Time and Newsweek, after three Top-5 albums, including the anthemic Born to Run and record-setting concert tours, we’re supposed to think of him as a struggling loner, getting […]

The Mastermind – 5

Kelly Reichardt’s latest addition to the slow cinema genre starts off well in a small Massachusetts city, circa 1970, with the totally pleasant Josh O’Connor’s museum heist, but then he and the film have nowhere to go and Reichardt goes there.

Blue Moon – 7.8

Aided by a comb-over, Ethan Hawke transforms to a lost-soul, lost-cause Lorenz Hart lounging in Sardi’s bar on the night that Oklahoma! opens (without him). Bobby Cannavale, Patrick Kennedy, Margaret Qualley and the uniquitous Andrew Scott are excellent foils for essentially a monologue by Hawke/Hart that never goes away. At first it is a bit […]

One Battle After Another – 7.7

A propulsive story of domestic revolution that is eerily prescient in Trump’s America. Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Teyana Taylor and Chase Infiniti (as the young Willa) are beyond superb and the action scenes and cast of thousands are directed seamlessly. The hole in the middle, though, is Leonardo DiCaprio, never my favorite actor. We […]