The whiplash camera work of a faux-documentary. Actors breaking the fourth wall, staring straight into the camera with a what-the-hell bemused expression. All this plus the underlying cynicism with a smirk will immediately remind viewers of top TV fare such as the American version of The Office. As if on cue, that series’ star, Steve […]
Let’s get the premise out of the way first, shall we? John Ruth “The Hangman” (Kurt Russell) is gonna take Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh, sporting a big black eye that is never explained but doesn’t has to be, to Red Rock, Wyoming, circa early 1870’s (give or take a few years). There she’s set […]
It’s tough to digest a film written by Charlie Kaufman right after you have seen it. Even the more accessible ones are enigmatic: Being John Malkovich (involving a portal into actor John Malkovich’s mind) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, where Jim Carrey erases all memories, literally, of his relationship with Kate Winslet after […]
This year brought filmgoers three top-notch biographical films on troubled women pop stars: Amy, Janis: Little Girl Blue; and What Happened, Miss Simone? Amy Winehouse and Janis Joplin took too many drugs and flamed out early. Nina Simone, though, soldiered against high odds on into old age, battling the twin tormentors of mental illness and […]
Taxi is the third unauthorized (and fascinating) film Jafar Panahi has completed (and smuggled out of Iran) since late 2010, when its government handed down a 20-year ban on him directing any movies, writing screenplays, or giving any media interviews. Like This Is Not a Film (2011) and Closed Curtain (2013), this is not just […]
Don’t be fooled by the European poster for Paolo Sorrentino’s latest amorphous film. It may be hard to pin down what type of movie this is, but it’s definitely not the spry sex comedy hinted at in the ad campaign, where stars Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel sit in a swimming pool staring gob-smacked at […]
The opening shot of a dead child about to be buried as his parents mourn graveside sets the tone for this efficient and at times absorbing retelling of Shakespeare’s violent tragedy. The few and infrequent bits of the play’s comic relief have been excised for one uniform, despairing depiction of warrior Macbeth’s murderous ascent to […]
There’s no intelligible dialogue in this animated odyssey about a nameless boy who leaves his home in the countryside in search of his father, but it still manages to speak to the heart. The father has left for the city to find work, and his lonely son undertakes a dreamlike pursuit. Growing in sinister stature […]
Just the facts, ma’am. That catchphrase from the old Dragnet TV series well describes director Tom McCarthy’s efficient, workmanlike approach to his beat-by-beat unmasking of a scandal. In 2002, the Boston Globe published an exhaustively researched exposé of how the city’s Roman Catholic diocese shielded hundreds of sexual abusers among its ranks for decades. This […]