Month: August 2015

Grandma

I can’t think of a better time for Lily Tomlin’s performance in Grandma to present itself to us. She’s reached the beloved third act of her career, has come out on the other side of the I HeartRead Full Review

Mistress American

Noah Baumbach’s image of New York is as romantic as Woody Allen, but he’s willing to admit that there are cracks on the infamous visage. He does not treat New York as a place thatRead Full Review

Ricki and the Flash

Diablo Cody’s preoccupation with outcasted women trying to fit into Middle American normalcy has given us Jason Reitman’s two best films, Juno and Young Adult. Her collaborations with Reitman have been the best thing for the two ofRead Full Review

Phoenix

The roots of the Holocaust are felt deeply in Christian Petzold’s Phoenix, a quaint tale about a Jewish woman named Nelly (Nina Hoss) who survived Auschwitz, but not without suffering wounds so devastating that she requiresRead Full Review

The Look of Silence

When I saw Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing in 2012, it completely transformed the concept I had for what contemporary human beings were capable of. That film explored the killing of one million Indonesian ‘communists’ (prettyRead Full Review

The End of the Tour

The concept of David Lipsky’s 2010 book Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself always felt a little gross to me. The book consists solely of a weekend-long interview between Lipsky and legendary author David FosterRead Full Review