If you’re an opera fan – or, better, a Maria Callas devotee – there’s plenty here to savor: biography, interviews, soaring music and endless views of La Diva. If you’re not, there’s a lot of scratchy recordings, pictures of Maria getting into limousines and out of airplanes, old newsreel-style clips and not much insight into […]
There’s only one Coen Brothers – well, actually, there are two of them, but their vision is singular and unique. They are also masters of the craft of filmmaking; you feel they can do whatever they want, and you luxuriate in the experience. For the Coens, violence is an art, genres are meant to be […]
The dramatized story of a foreign correspondent who is neurotic, alcoholic, charmless and a chain-smoker, who injects herself into stories and cares more about the people whose “stories” she tells than the people in her life. And to what end? For her own fame? For the glory of her newspaper? Surely not to alleviate suffering […]
I give this a zero for originality and a 100 for hitting all the right chords, and when the chords in question are booming ’80s arena-rock anthems by Queen, you’ve got a head start on a really fun movie. It’s also a feel-good movie, despite the difficult private life and AIDS-related death of the lead […]
Rupert Everett’s paean to Oscar Wilde’s final, desperate days is mainly interesting for its connection to Oscar Wilde. “The Importance of Being Ernest” was in the back of my mind the whole time I watched Wilde’s dissolution in turn-of-the-century Paris and Naples. Coming on top of Collette, I’m getting familiar with the period, not to […]
Our fall entertainment schedule in New York began and ended with audience singalongs. At “Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin” the elderly crowd at the 59E59 Theater heartily joined in on “God Bless America” and many other Berlin classics. They weren’t as put off by Hershey Felder’s unpleasant looks and persona as I was. A much […]
Like a Monet garden scene, Colette is a lovely period piece, more art than fire. The always beautiful Keira Knightley (how does she look so young!) embodies the turn-of-the-century writer/performer as she explores life and emerges from her husband’s shadow and control. To me, Dominic West’s role – and its contrast with Jonathan Pryce’s in […]
I’ve awarded the non-Oscar for Best Director of a Documentary to Jimmy Chin for this engaging, gripping drama cum tutorial about Alex Honnold’s obsession to climb El Capitan in Yellowstone without a safety net – e.g., free solo. First, there’s the charming main character, wonderfully ingenuous and open for someone in his position: the best […]
If you like watching Bradley Cooper (with Sam Elliot’s voice) and Lady Gaga (with and without makeup), you’ll find plenty to like in this movie, which owed its feeling of longeur partly to overlong closeups of the two stars. If you’re looking, however, for credible characters, gripping story or particularly good music, you may be […]
Michael Moore has packed four movies, four movies, four movies-in-one, at least! There’s Hillary’s defeat; Flint’s water crisis; the Parkland school shooting; and Trump’s neo-Fascism, at least two of which pick up on earlier Moore films. There’s a ray of hope in the person of four emerging radical candidates for Congress and the West Virginia […]
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