Who knew that Joan Jett was still rocking? Somehow, despite all the sturm und drang of a typical rock biography – rejection, no respect, getting ripped off, amazing highs of fleeting fame, falling-out with bandmates, etc., etc. – she resisted and survived, not only setting an example but mentoring other female rockers. After the sold-out […]
A beautiful period piece, with visuals of ladies in ruffles straight out of William Merritt Chase, plus a nod to de La Tour and some Sargent. When Bridget is seen on a train to Montana at the end, you realize that there hasn’t been any color or fresh air or distance in any shot that […]
This was shaping up as an excellent study of a marriage, with Glenn Close accommodating herself to the shadow cast by her Nobel Prize-winning husband, but then it took a horribly wrong and totally unnecessary turn that was both totally unbelievable and made us rethink, and doubt, the wonderful characterization that Close had offered before. […]
The whole film is told by looking at computer, iPhone, TV and other screens, which provides a subsidiary comment on how “we” communicate and even live our lives in this modern age. The story itself is a missing “Gone Girl” mystery, with an intricate puzzle plot that makes sense, except for the speed of the […]
A charming rom-com in the Hugh Grant/Julia Roberts mold that might have scored even higher if I could have understood the English (Irish/Australian) accents. All four characters were delightful: the beauteous Rose Byrne, the humorously cloddish Chris O’Dowd, the talented slacker Ethan Hawke and the precocious Azhy Robertson, who at maybe 9 years old was […]
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 […]
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