In his last three films—Gloria, A Fantastic Woman and now Disobedience—Chilean filmmaker Sebastian Lelio has explored the struggles of outsiders standing aside of established communities, mores and social constructs. In the process, he has also written a collection of indelible female characters who embrace…
Read MoreCan Love Outlast Change? Every Day Author David Levithan on Ambitious Teen Movie Love Story

Based on the wildly successful 2012 novel about a disembodied soul that inhabits a new host each day only to fall in love—and want to settle down—with a smart, lonely high school girl, Every Day is, for a movie about teenagers, as ambitiously conceived…
Read MoreGoodbye Christopher Robin: Director Simon Curtis on the Origin Story of a Writer, a Boy and a Teddy for the Ages

While many of us fondly recall Winne-the-Pooh as indelible nostalgia and a collection of some of the most enduring characters in all of children’s literature, far fewer are aware of the story’s bittersweet origins. In director Simon Curtis’ new picture, Goodbye Christopher Robin, an…
Read MoreMen, Mid-Life, Melancholy: Danny Boyle on the Bittersweet Irreverence of T2: Trainspotting

Danny Boyle, the celebrated British filmmaker who won the Oscar for 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire, makes pictures—notably Shallow Grave, 28 Days Later, The Beach, 127 Hours and Steve Jobs—that are visual and aural tapestries of throbbing momentum, precisely shot, edited and scored, aces at seizing…
Read MoreStephen McKinley Henderson and Jovan Adepo on “Eternal” Fences—Fathers, Sons and Lost Dreams Haunt August Wilson’s Landmark American Drama

It’s a rarity in American film to observe some of the best actors working, delivering some of the most powerful dialogue of the last century—and in close-up, no less—but that is precisely what you get in Fences, Denzel Washington’s screen version of August Wilson’s…
Read MoreFair Play to Those Who Dare to Dream: La La Land Director Damien Chazelle and Star Rosemarie Dewitt on Courage of Artists, Lovers

In a bravura act of movie invention, filmmaker Damien Chazelle has fashioned a throwback that’s also contemporary; a musical that is intensely dramatic; a love story of élan and heartbreak; and one of the best-ever movie love letters to starry-eyed, pure of heart struggling…
Read MoreFull disclosure—movie and pop star Hailee Steinfeld makes me feel like a teenage girl in all the best ways, not least because she can turn a pop song inside out with fully felt vocals and a music video persona sincere enough to let you…
Read More‘If I didn’t love him, who would?’ Star Stephen Lang on the Method, and Madness, of ‘Don’t Breathe’ Character

As a disabled, Detroit Army vet beset upon by a trio of young burglars in Don’t Breathe, star Stephen Lang gives a maniacal performance, deftly balancing the physical with the cerebral. In the visceral thriller directed by Fede Alvarez (The Evil Dead), a reclusive…
Read MoreSeriously, Funny: Simon Helberg on Endearing Lunacy of Breakout Florence Foster Jenkins Performance

The idea of playing Meryl Streep’s right-hand man in any movie must be both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, you get to work with the best; the other, try not to be eclipsed when she gives a performance as wonderful as…
Read MoreLogan Lerman and Sarah Gadon Chart Loss of Innocence, American Promise in Powerful Indignation

Young stars Logan Lerman and Sarah Gadon create a palpable, doomed love in James Schamus’ superb screen adaptation of Philip Roth’s 2008 novel Indignation, and when I sat down with them recently in a bustling Chicago restaurant, they pretty much put me into the…
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