Archive for category: Spotlight

It’s obvious early on, despite Javier Bardem’s suavity, that the “good” in the title is meant ironically. His badness, however–again, maybe due to Bardem’s inherent charm–never seems that bad: how would you react to a maniac setting up with a bullhorn and banners in front of your front door, and the personal attention he gives to the plant manager who continually screws up seems wildly excessive if the only goal is a regional corporate award on top of a dozen others already won, including “the Oscar of scales.” The pleasures of the movie are in the individual performances, not the story, which left me cold and confused.

Much better than I expected.  The action takes place from 1953 to 1969, and the film feels like it. When was the last time we saw a hero as decent, sincere, handsome and blond as Tate? The story is just as implausible as it was in the book, but the imperfect crime at its climax is finessed more adroitly. The biggest plus of the film is David Strathairn’s performance as the Gregory Peck/Sam Waterson lawyer. In fact, echoes of To Kill A Mockingbird echo through the marsh. Daisy Edgar-Jones, in a hard role, is fine.

Hilarious! Antonio Banderas steals the movie, as well as the movie-within-the-movie, in a master class of actors acting at acting–all very meta. A bewigged Penelope Cruz is perfection as a dominatrix director, and Argentinian actor Oscar Martinez holds his own against showboat performances from his Spanish co-stars. The plot is a stage for a string of laugh-out-loud jokes, each set up with care, that linger deliciously after the movie ends–or does it? The architecturally minimalist set was probably suggested by Covid filming, but it suits the purity of the satire.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, or Belfast–Italian Style, Paolo Sorrentino’s love letter to growing up in Naples in the 1980s captures La Famiglia in all its frictions and closeness. His style is distinctive: every scene is short and self-contained, without musical background (except once). His characters, too, are distinctive: the lusty aunt, the prankster mother, the misanthropic matriarch and on and on. Best is the film’s sense of humor. There are no–well, only one or two–overt jokes, but the situations and people had me laughing the whole time. There’s a nod to Fellini, but more to Italian realism. And how beautiful Sorrentino makes the world. Like young Fabietto will make his movies.

A delightful snapshot of a pivotal time for one young boy growing up in Belfast. The well-publicized fact that the boy was based on director Kenneth Branagh eliminated any anxiety that the story would turn out well, which allowed us to sit back and enjoy spending time with this family, played by the estimable Judi Dench, Ciaran Hinds and Caitriona Balfe, who grabbed the screen every minute she appeared. If we hadn’t known it to be Branagh’s story I suspect we would have been left hanging at the end, but no matter. The unresolved political conflagration that backgrounded the film was only one of many parallels between Branagh’s Belfast and Cuaron’s similarly engaging Roma.