I always hesitate to create a “worst” movies of the year list as films are generally so difficult to make that it is a wonder any ever get completed, and the achievements of artists who have, with passion, purpose and good intentions, poured everything…
Read More
More is much more in Babylon, Damien Chazelle’s mammoth period ode to a Hollywood in transition circa 1927 and plunge into gleeful debauchery, mad invention and wild excess. In a movie bound to divide audiences, adventurous cineastes will love Chazelle’s go-for-broke, enfant terrible provocation…
Read More
A now-familiar skeptics’ refrain tends to follow James Cameron during the run ups to his often game-changing pictures—they are too expensive and rife with cost overruns that will bankrupt their studios; their onset dynamics are ruled by “king of the world” megalomania; that he…
Read More
It’s been some time since filmmaker Darren Aronofsky has resembled the promise of his early auteur status, cemented by his striking 1998 debut puzzle Pi and peaking more than a decade later (and ago) with 2010’s diabolical Black Swan. Say what you will, but…
Read More
Could Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical The Fabelmans, about the artistic birth of and influences on perhaps the most populist American film director of all time, clinch the Best Picture Oscar come next March? Current thinking is that the picture, and its popular director, are well…
Read More
Luca Guadagnino’s spellbinding Bones and All, a tender, terrifying young love story between—bear with me—a pair of cannibal paramours, is deeply sensitive and shocking in the extreme. That proves quite a combo in a film Guadagnino has delivered with a most original mash-up of…
Read More
As a wickedly funny sendup of haute cuisine, celebrity chefs and foodie culture, the slickly entertaining The Menu is an enjoyable takedown of pretentious restauranteurs and their willing, wealthy patrons—and a clever horror satire that doesn’t miss a beat, or more appropriately, a course.…
Read More
Filmmaker Elegance Bratton delivers a distinctive, compelling film from a formative life chapter, and one offering no easy resolutions.…
Read More
I recently caught up with Elegance Bratton and Anna Diop to deconstruct their new projects: The Inspection and Nanny could not be more removed in subject matter and approach, yet each provokes us to consider who we are and how we fit into our…
Read More
As adolescents, how well can we ever really know our parents or their personal circumstances? Filmmaker Charlotte Wells charts exquisite father-daughter chapter in understated coming-of-age drama.…
Read More