An innovative and rather intense look inside the mind of a 16-year-old biracial girl (Helena Howard), who comes in and out of focus, both literally and figuratively. Actually, more interesting is her relationships with, or maybe it is just her views of, two white mother figures, played adroitly by Molly Parker and Miranda July, whose […]
I wondered why someone would want to make a movie about a barely-was has-been, hooked on heroin, mad at the world, as she tries to rebuild a flimsy career in unlicensed Eastern European venues. The last 15 minutes, the film started to click, Nico’s voice sounded better, and I sort of appreciated the punkness of […]
An early frontrunner for Worst Film of the Year: cliched acting, flat directing, a void of a plot (“Lisa’s Bad Day” was the sum and substance of the story), visually uninteresting setting, and generally unappealing characters. There was not a single one of the disjointed scenes that connected with me or didn’t make me wish […]
Kudos to Spike Lee, who masterfully tells a story and envelops it in a personal statement about racism in America, past and present. Adam Driver has never been better, and there are fun roles for Steve Buscemi’s younger brother, Harry Belafonte and the goofy guy from I,Tonya. There’s a prologue and an epilogue that, strictly […]
Maybe it’s just that I wasn’t shocked, or even surprised, that 45 years ago someone engineered a study of twins separated at birth, or that an adoption agency wouldn’t tell the adoptive parents about the twins, or that one of the reunited triplets would eventually go his own way and have emotional issues, or maybe […]
Excruciating and exquisite at the same time, this movie walks a fine line beautifully: we see Kayla Day at her most unattractive, yet we like her all the same. She has enough acne to be real, but not so much that we look away. And if anybody doesn’t identify with at least one scene, if […]
I say 3/8 because I only last 45 minutes. When a plot is so formulaic, not to say stupid, you count on enjoyable performances to keep you interested. Unfortunately, the all-star cast was as flat and unconvincing as the plot. Sandra Bullock is a fine actress, but a compulsively criminal mastermind she is not. Cate […]
The King tells a story of America over the last 60 years using the life of Elvis Presley as its metaphor. From an era of innocence and authenticity and world-shaking change, we progress, or regress, to bloated stagnation with money the only goal, from Tupelo to Las Vegas. But director Eugene Jarecki doesn’t preach; he […]
This could be viewed as a film about the PTSD of Vietnam veterans, a father-daughter relationship or social communities, but I admired it most for the coming-of-age performance by Thomasin McKenzie, a wonderfully ingenuous New Zealand actress. She seemed to grow up as she moved from the forest to living with others, even while her […]
Whether you think “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” was warm and fuzzy or vapid and cloying will determine your reaction to this movie, which faithfully recounted the career of Fred Rogers and his unique view of television. Regardless of your view, and I lean toward the latter camp, the film does make one wonder if kids are […]
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