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 […]
This will win the award for darkest film of the year (I hope). Ethan Hawke was riveting, although I wish he had had a bit more presence to begin with. He never seemed to fill his pastoral robes, so didn’t convince me of what he used to have been. We came upon him already subject […]
For the first half, I thought, what a true American hero Ruth Ginsberg is, and what a wonderful support was her husband. I wanted to pair her documentary up with Itzhak Perlman’s for a heartwarming celebration of goodness and excellence. Once Martin Ginsburg died, and once Ruth ascended the high court, however, things sort of […]
For two-thirds this was an unusually realistic take on motherhood, albeit focused on the negative, made enjoyable by the intelligent dialogue and the fine acting of Charlize Theron. Then the plot jumped off the tracks, and Theron’s character started acting in ways that made no sense. At the end, was it revealed that the nanny […]
Ignore the meaningless title: there wasn’t much sunshine here, just a series of flawed relationships for the wondrous Juliette Binoche in an essay on the subject of, when lovers talk, are they actually saying anything? There are no resolutions – indeed, Gerard Depardieu is still discussing the subject, unreliably, as the credits end – but […]
Our ambitious program of eight shows in five weeks got off to a disappointing start: both Harry Clarke and Three Tall Women were well reviewed but left us cold. Billy Crudup and Glenda Jackson, the respective stars, gave flawless performances, but neither was a character we wanted to spend time with. They were both self-centered […]
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