Archive for category: Reviews

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 speaking, don’t belong in the movie about Ron Stallworth, but they add gravitas, and current relevance, to a story that might otherwise be hard to take seriously. When I read a piece in the next day’s Times about a Midwestern audience watching the new Dinesh D’Souza movie, I felt I was back in Colorado Springs.

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 Blanchett is rarely my favorite, and her shaggy hairdo, a la Jennifer Lawrence in Red Sparrow, did not a character make. Little spark anywhere, lot of absurdity everywhere.

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 inherently attracted to pie-throwing and violence; or if not, has children’s television had such an influence? Of course, we should all agree that more portrayals of niceness and goodness would be beneficial, but I’d rather they come with the art and intelligence of Sesame Street.

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 lots of closeups of Binoche’s face, beautifully lit, which is not a bad way to spend a late afternoon at the movies.

Yes, it was scary – especially the erect nail waiting to be stepped on – and no, the story didn’t make any sense, which I gather is par for a horror movie. What set this apart was the depiction of a family dynamic, portrayed by the real-life husband/wife team of John Krasinski and Emily Blunt. Still, as one new horror piled on another, I felt detached, contemplating how I would have responded to each turn of events (hint: not well).