Archive for category: Reviews

This was three films in one, but none dug as deeply as I would have liked. Nan Goldin’s crusade to make museums expunge the Sackler name bookended the documentary, but we never saw how the museums grappled with the issue. Second was Nan Goldin’s loveless upbringing, which produced the film’s title and her sister’s suicide, told through scrapbook phots. Third, and most intriguing, was Goldin’s artistic output, but the movie didn’t address the question I’ve always had: how did her photographs of grungy people in their underwear make her an art star? You could say her upbringing led to her art, and the success of her art enabled her to accomplish her crusade, but a film that concentrated, instead, on any of those three topics could have been better.

A fairly literal relocation of Ikiru, by Akira Kurosawa, from Tokyo to London, with the estimable Bill Nighy playing the role created by the incomparable Takashi Shimura. As I watched, all I could see were the echoes of the Japanese original (somewhat like seeing David Copperfield as I read Demon Copperhead). By cutting 40 minutes from its source, the English movie loses texture and context: Mr. Williams’s tortured relationship with his son and daughter-in-law is among the losses. The biggest loss, however, is the devastating social satire: Ikiru commented on the Japan of 1952, when it was released. A 2022 film about England as it supposedly existed 70 years ago carries no bite. And I found it hard to believe that the mores of Tokyo and London in 1952 were so identical. In short, I found this an interesting experiment, but I can’t judge it on its own merits or lack thereof.

A buddy film about fighter pilots and their planes that had the bad timing to be released the same year as Top Gun: Maverick. Its only ace was the (true) story of its Black hero overcoming racial discrimination in the military during the Korean War. Curiously, however, Jesse Brown was portrayed by Jonathan Majors with a huge chip on his shoulder while the hurdles he overcame were only briefly mentioned, resulting in a less than inspiring hero, while Glen Powell, his White wingman (and movie Executive Producer), took over the Tom Cruise role. Basing the film on a true story limited its dramatic impact as much as the predictable, cliched scenes that populated the script.

A portrait of the (cinema) artist as a young man, demonstrating the power of movies, even as we sat in a mostly empty theater. The story was sweet, if conventional, and well told, per usual for Stephen Spielberg. One wonders, though, how it would play if the viewer didn’t know beforehand that the story was autobiographical and that the kid, for all his troubles, would ultimately emerge as the most successful filmmaker of his generation. I could have done without the whole Judd Hirsch episode and the lazy pace that made this feel more like a memoir than a drama. But in a year of experimental dreck, an old-fashioned film from a master was welcome.