The adorable Greta Gerwig in a madcap farce from Noah Baumbach – much better than While We’re Young – reminded me of the younger Woody Allen’s movies: a charming female lead, New York locations, oddball secondary characters and real-life situations that seem real but probably occur more often in the movies. Lola Kirke is the grounded one, […]
“I had sex today,” announces 15-year-old Minnie in the opening scene, and that’s pretty much all that happens. When we learn that the sex was with her mother’s slacker boyfriend, a certain uneasiness, not to mention creepiness, sets in, but even then the ultimate explosion we see coming is rather muted. Kristen Wiig is wonderful […]
I haven’t read Infinite Jest – although now I want to – and I know nothing about David Foster Wallace, but Jason Segel did about as good a job of creating a real person out of a historical figure as I can remember. Jesse Eisenberg was brilliant, too, as a youngish reporter unable to separate an […]
An intense psychological thriller, with both leads acting up a storm in a confined space, making us think and feel all at once and constantly. Reviewers cite a similarity to Hitchcock’s Vertigo, which I either don’t remember or didn’t see, but I felt an echo of Gaslight in the manipulative husband-wife relationship, or even Pygmalion, as Johnny tries to […]
As far as I can tell, this captured the world of Gangsta Rap so well I feel I’m now an expert. I certainly learned a lot of new songs. I don’t think there was much original in the story of the friends from the ‘hood who rose through the power of their art, fighting the […]
Yo, bitch, whatcha doin’ in my movie! Chasing Chester, not waiting for Godot, not waiting for anyone. Great characters and gritty streets – L.A. like you’ve never seen it, nor want to: “City of Stars Bail Bonds” being a typical background sign. All roads lead to Donut Time, and at the film’s climax all the […]
To its credit, I was able to sit through the whole movie (having nowhere else to go), and it was clearly much better than all the animated trailers that preceded it (and I count Pan in that category). It was clever in concept – that is, positing five emotions as drivers of how we feel […]
A very bizarre story, slightly more engaging than annoying, in which an undistinguished real estate agent tries out the personas of his clients. Perhaps it is intended as a meditation on identity: do clothes make the man, or will a wax mask do it, or the voice? Or do you have to take on his […]
An attractive but slightly loony fan of singer Vincent Lacroix is asked, as a favor, to dispose of his girlfriend’s body and then, as a result, is treated as a murder suspect. Meanwhile, the police team investigating the disappearance is having their own, typically French, problems. Lives are hanging in the balance, but it’s not really […]
This Judd Apatow-Amy Schumer flick featured every cliche in the rom-com book, but hey, it’s a pretty good book! I laughed pretty much the whole way through every silly scene, enjoying the company of all the characters, from Bill Hader and Tilda Swinton to Brie Larson to LeBron James and Chrissie Evert. The reviews I’ve […]
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