Watching Minari, I was reminded of Tolstoy’s famous line “each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. He is both suggesting an infinity of unhappiness while also alluding to a sort of snowflake pattern within eachRead Full Review
I Care a Lot
It says a lot about the state of comedies that I Care a Lot can call itself one. It’s not simply that the film is unfunny, but one would be hard-pressed to find a single punchline. TheRead Full Review
Nomadland
The adventure of discovery has long been a major part of American mythology. Even after explorers and colonists reached the Pacific, large swaths of the American public are still pushed toward what’s next, what’s new, what’s out there. This isRead Full Review
Judas and the Black Messiah
Early in Judas and the Black Messiah, Bill O’Neal (played with frantic perfection by Lakeith Stanfield), finds himself in a police interrogation room. He’s just been arrested after impersonating an FBI officer in a creative attemptRead Full Review
One Night in Miami
In a way, One Night in Miami is its own kind of superhero movie. Its structure and tone are rooted in populist storytelling, history through the eyes of American titans. That it takes real historical figuresRead Full Review
Pieces of a Woman
Pieces of a Woman exists in the spaces between grief and explanation, examining the vacuum created by the arbitrary nature of tragedy. How does someone manage to simply exist in these spaces? Where all seems lost andRead Full Review
I Really Fucking Miss The Movies
The last movie that I saw in theaters was The Way Back on March 7th. I reviewed it essentially as a bad movie that I more or less enjoyed. Its sense of melodrama (and its depiction ofRead Full Review
Wonder Woman 1984
I’ve relented in my personal battle against superhero movies. They’ve taken over cinematic pop culture to such a degree that a pandemic-plagued year without them made the public feel like there were no movies atRead Full Review
Soul
Pixar’s skill for selling you sentimentality without making you feel cheap is unmatched in Hollywood. Their films offer platitudes about the affirmations of life and maximize emotional effect by zeroing in on humanity’s small beauties. It’sRead Full Review
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom opens with the image of two Black men running through the nighttime forests of the American South. As they journey through the thick trees they come upon some torches. Right at the momentRead Full Review
Red, White and Blue
Triumphs don’t come without great struggle in the worlds of Steve McQueen. His first three Small Axe films have been about spirited resistance in one way or another, but he flatly refuses to coat it in any romanticism.Read Full Review
Collective
There are moments in Collective that feel unbelievable as you’re watching them. One happens in the first ten minutes. Soon after a metal band finishes their set in a popular Bucharest club called Colectiv, a fireRead Full Review
Mank
Herman J. Mankiewicz was a movie character long before Mank. He was an invaluable supporting character within the grand epic of Hollywood’s Golden Age, a vibrant Falstaff during the height of the Classical Studio Era. HeRead Full Review
Lovers Rock
If the first installment in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series (Mangrove) was a tense procedural, the second is a loose dance party. Literally. A collection of people, ranging from teenager to young adult, meet in aRead Full Review
Happiest Season
Harper Caldwell, played by Mackenzie Davis in Happiest Season, is a Christmas person. She enjoys holiday rituals, gaudy home decorations, and white elephant gift exchanges. A major aspect of the Christmas person’s life is the Christmas movie,Read Full Review
Hillbilly Elegy
J.D. Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy kicked off a literary trend in 2016 of nonfiction books meant to reconcile the plight of lower class whites in America. These books were liberal olive branches to poor white communities, ravagedRead Full Review
Mangrove
If you feel like the disparity between movies and television has shrunken, then Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series is a stunning example of it. The series is composed of five feature films, independent from one another inRead Full Review
The Life Ahead
Keeping track of all the clichés used in The Life Ahead can be tiresome. Perhaps, you could turn it into a drinking game, if you wanted to add a dose of excitement that you certainly wouldn’tRead Full Review
On The Rocks
The dynamics of a complicated father-daughter relationship lay at the heart of Sofia Coppola’s latest film, On The Rocks. On the one end, we have a beacon of New York City liberal motherhood played by RashidaRead Full Review
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
Shock value, in and of itself, isn’t Sacha Baron Cohen’s main interest, though his notorious interviews often leave his subjects hapless and compromised in ways that can make your jaw drop. Exposing hypocrisies throughout theRead Full Review
The Trial of the Chicago 7
The reason historical period drama is such a popular prestige genre is that it can be either nostalgic or aspirational, pleasing a broad audience no matter what their predispositions may be. That is true of The TrialRead Full Review
Dick Johnson is Dead
Attention is Kirsten Johnson’s specialty. Her 2016 film, Cameraperson, was a masterpiece of attention, a collection of footage shot over a decades of a career as a documentary cinematographer. Johnson called the film a memoir, a life’sRead Full Review
Tesla
Near the beginning of Tesla, the film’s narrator quantifies Nikola Tesla’s legacy in its simplest terms: through its Google search results. He has over thirty-four million results, we’re told, including a multitude of variations on the same fourRead Full Review
MLK/FBI
MLK/FBI is being broadcast virtually as part of the 58th New York Film Festival, and was available to rent and stream through the virtual theater at the Film Society at Lincoln Center The declassification of FBI filesRead Full Review
Le bonheur
Films as dark and subversive as Le bonheur are not usually so beautiful. Drenched in a rich, chromatic palette and played to the tune of twee renditions of Mozart (played by Jean-Michel Defaye), the third feature fromRead Full Review
Sátántangó
The characters in Sátántangó are used to persevering through brutal conditions. The rain never stops, the sky a permanent overcast grey which promises no hope for warmth or light. Their homes are crumbling and dilapidated, their belongingsRead Full Review
I’m Thinking of Ending Things
Without the filter of directors like Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry, the screenplays of Charlie Kaufman can have an unfiltered quality, as the despair so central to his stories becomes much less palatable. Directing his own scripts,Read Full Review
Cane River
The restoration and re-release of Cane River in 2018 brought independent director Horace B. Jenkins’s film to many who had not heard of it before. Jenkins’s death in 1982 occurred shortly after the film was finished, which stuntedRead Full Review
An Elephant Sitting Still
Place Hu Bo among the ranks of the tragic artists, the ones lost well before we were prepared to see them to go. An Elephant Sitting Still is his only feature film. He committed suicide in 2017Read Full Review
Young Ahmed
The tenderness of the films from the Dardenne brothers are usually contrasted by worlds offset by calamity. Their characters are often forced into inherently unfair circumstances that are made worse by their suspect judgment and poorRead Full Review
Walkabout
The human race has a fraught relationship with the natural world. We have taken much more than it was ever meant to give. We’ve given ourselves rules, and placed ourselves in a society to maintainRead Full Review
First Cow
The opening image of First Cow is of a massive cargo ship gingerly easing its way down a peaceful river. The ship itself is not peaceful, it’s loud and lumbering, but it’s far enough away toRead Full Review
Mr. Arkadin
Stories that circle behind the production of Mr. Arkadin are deliciously Welles-ian. An unfinished film, pieced together by the cineastes who adored him, with a convoluted plot that is rescued by inventive filmmaking. What more canRead Full Review
The Truth
Familial tensions abound throughout the films of Hirokazu Kore-eda. Children are often suffering the burdens of disgruntled parents, as the pride of adulthood grinds uncomfortably against the pure innocence of youth. The Truth is his firstRead Full Review
Palm Springs
Palm Springs has an exquisite first act. If you’ve happened to watch the trailer for this film then you already know the movie’s big reveal, but caught unawares, the first ten minutes is especially effective.Read Full Review
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
Aside from being one of the preeminent rock stars of the Twentieth Century, David Bowie proved to be a rather talented actor. His roles are few – on several occasions, he was simply asked toRead Full Review
Never Rarely Sometimes Always
“Are you abortion minded?” This question is asked early in the film Never Rarely Sometimes Always by a middle-aged woman at a women’s clinic in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania. The question is being posed to a seventeen year-old named Autumn (SidneyRead Full Review
The Watermelon Woman
An experimental filmmaker by trade, Cheryl Dunye’s feature debut, The Watermelon Woman, has very little interest in perpetuating mainstream filmmaking sensibilities. Her fusion of documentary and narrative, as well as her inclusion of metafictional aspects should alienateRead Full Review
Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day
In about thirteen years, Rainer Werner Fassbinder directed over forty feature films before dying of a drug overdose at the age of thirty-seven. This doesn’t include his ambitious television projects which includes that gargantuan Berlin Alexanderplatz,Read Full Review
Da 5 Bloods
Watching Spike Lee’s movies, you can see that he views film history as a legitimate form of American history. Consider the way BlacKKKlansman opens with segments from Gone With The Wind, extolling the power of cinema while alsoRead Full Review
The Lovebirds
A common refrain you may find yourself saying while watching The Lovebirds is “Why isn’t this funnier?”. You won’t ask this maliciously, after all, you have a lot of goodwill towards its two stars, Issa RaeRead Full Review
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
The legend of Streep having grown to such gargantuan proportions, she’s come to represent a very mainstream version of excellence. People think of her as an actress the way people think of Steven Spielberg asRead Full Review
Taste of Cherry
The words “In the name of God” open the film Taste of Cherry. It’s a modest but forceful title card that appears before we see any action. Not that there is a lot of action in theRead Full Review
Chauvinism as Fragility in Eric Rohmer’s ‘Six Moral Tales’
The men in Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales are described as “fragile”. They lack a control over their feelings and emotions, specifically when they are in the company of women. Oftentimes, this lack of control projects itselfRead Full Review
Meantime
The human tensions in Mike Leighs films far outweigh the political ones, though that doesn’t mean that there is one without the other. His characters are so often wrecked by implacable restlessness, worn out by theRead Full Review
Only Angels Have Wings
Masculinity and moral codes abound in the filmography of legendary director Howard Hawks, and Only Angels Have Wings has tied both tightly within the film’s plot, influencing and often encouraging the characters. The script, by veteran JulesRead Full Review
To Be or Not To Be
Considering the polarizing response to Jojo Rabbit less than a year ago, you’d probably think that To Be or Not to Be would be perhaps a bridge to far for audiences sensitive to dark comedy involving NazisRead Full Review
The Music Room
One of the many joys to be found in the films of Satyajit Ray is his ability to delve into the humanity of his characters without judgment. His style is clear and aspires toward objectivity,Read Full Review
Bad Education
Bad Education premiered on HBO Sunday night, 4/26/20. It is now available on HBOGo and HBONow. There was controversy when HBO snatched up Bad Education in the bidding war that followed its successful premiere at lastRead Full Review
Battleship Potemkin
Sergei Eisenstein’s association with evolution in film editing is well-chronicled. He and his Soviet peers established the foundations of “montage” as a technique to rouse emotion within the audience, and Battleship Potemkin is often sighted as Eisenstein’sRead Full Review