What a sad, rich movie Noah Baumbach has fashioned with Marriage Story, about a New York theater director and actress who call it quits after their personal and creative partnership has run its course. A semi-autobiographical, remarkably perceptive picture about the emotional spoils of…
Read MoreIf Martin Scorsese never makes another mob picture (at least in the formal sense), his new magnum opus, The Irishman, might possibly be the final movie word on the subject. Certainly amongst the finest in an oeuvre that includes masterworks like Goodfellas and The…
Read MoreI suppose those longing for nostalgia might take a shine, if you’ll pardon the pun, to Doctor Sleep, the new movie sequel to The Shining, which spins a triptych of tales that converge in an expected, and unsatisfying, fan service climax. But for most, I suspect,…
Read MoreBreakout Star Thomasin McKenzie Balances Tenderness and Strength in Jojo Rabbit, Leave No Trace
It’s sometimes referred to as a once-in-a-generation talent. And it would not be an overstatement to say that nineteen-year-old New Zealand actress Thomasin Mckenzie, currently on screens in Taika Waititi’s jaunty wartime satire Jojo Rabbit and the gritty, Henry V monarchy drama The King,…
Read MoreEverything you’ve heard about the Cannes-celebrated Parasite, or perhaps more pointedly, Scenes from the Class Struggle in Seoul, is tenfold true. A savage, toothy satire about social class, or more specifically, about the resourcefulness and eventual uprising of the underclass, it’s a picture that…
Read MoreThe mysteries at the center of the tense drama Luce are really, you might say, for right now. Telling the story of a model perfect teen in an affluent Virginia suburb who is valedictorian, star athlete and pride of his family, teachers and community—and…
Read MoreQuentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood—a gorgeous evocation of 1969 Los Angeles and bittersweet elegy for falling Hollywood stars and the passing of a definitive American era—is the work of an artist at the peak of his powers, which, if you believe him,…
Read MoreMaiden, the inspiring new documentary about the first all-female crew to sail an around the world yacht race in 1989, is a rousing epic that tells both personal and macro stories about the dual currents, nautical and cultural, faced by a talented team of…
Read MoreMaiden Heroine Tracy Edwards Changed the World to Suit Herself, and Everyone Else, in Boundary Crossing Voyage—and Life
She was always going to do exactly what she wanted. At 15, British youth Tracy Edwards unceremoniously left an unhappy Wales home to start a new life in the Greek port of Piraeus, quickly finding work as a stewardess on a yacht cruising the…
Read MoreMidsommar, Ari Aster’s magnum opus follow-up to his deeply unsettling Hereditary, is a sophomore picture of command and precision, well-directed and frequently diverting in its tale of unsuspecting American collegiates venturing into a once-a-century celebration of pagan depravity. Yet as movie freak outs go,…
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