A movie can’t be successful artistically just on good intentions. If that were the case then “Race” would be the best picture of the year (or of many years). Alas, a modern telling of the story of Jesse Owens with a good-sized budget to hire a few great actors and recreate the Olympics will have […]
Film Review
Posted inCulture
Beware “The Witch”
A quiet creeper that will disappoint most
“The Witch” premiered to great acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival, with critical quotes providing unrestrained buildup, such as Stephen King saying it scared the hell out of him. Once it took the Best Director award at the festival, the hype accelerated. The movie is being marketed as the scariest horror film in decades, but […]
Posted inCulture
So Bloody Romantic
Crimson Peak defies genre
Crimson Peak is going to divide audiences. The advertising campaign is definitely selling, while not quite a different movie, something a little more comfortably defined as horror, when the film is actually a very old-fashioned ghost story. This is a violent gothic romance with some ghosts, secrets, bodice ripping, and face smashing. Anyone expecting something […]
Posted inCulture
Small Portions
Murder and morality in Irrational Man
Remember the joke Woody Allen tells in Annie Hall about the two old women in the Catskills? The gist is this: One woman complains that the food is terrible, the other replies, “I know, such small portions.” Allen’s films in this later part of his career are so innocuous, so wisplike, so slight, that while […]
Posted inCulture
Theatrical Release
The sad story of a girl named Amy
From a distance, it’s hard to tell how much celebrity suffering is actually theater. Asif Kapadia’s shattering documentary Amy certainly qualifies as theater in its own right, piecing together great amounts of archival, never-before-seen video footage of late musician Amy Winehouse with dramatic effectiveness. Much of Kapadia’s film is narrated by the star herself, inter-spliced […]
Posted inCulture
Crime Story
What if The French Connection were…French?
If nothing else, The Connection looks gorgeous—set in Marseille in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and shot on 35mm, it’s a movie that revels in its time and place, with Laurent Tangy’s sun-dappled cinematography rolling in dusky yellows, browns, and blues. And when those visuals are paired up with a few select songs from […]
Posted inCulture
Nu-Metal Blues
Terminator Genisys and the failure of modern Hollywood
“Elegant” may not be the first word that springs to mind when it comes to heavily armed Austrian cyborgs, but in the case of the original Terminator, it fits. Even some 30 years down the pipe, James Cameron’s nitro-burning B-movie remains a witty marvel of construction, smuggling some surprisingly resonant themes among its carnage and—possibly […]
Posted inCulture
Old Gold
Iris’ life lessons in style
Growing old has never looked as wonderful as it does on Iris Apfel. The 93-year-old is a style icon—so much so that the Metropolitan Museum of Art hosted an exhibition of her personal wardrobe in 2005. A retired textile mogul and interior designer who tweaked the White House for nine different presidents, Apfel’s style is […]
Posted inCulture
Drum and Drummer
Whiplash: When drumming is LIFE AND DEATH
Whiplash is intense. Way more intense than one would expect, given that it’s about a kid learning how to play the drums. That kid is Andrew (Miles Teller), and he’s studying at a New York music conservatory that Fletcher (J.K. Simmons, who won an Oscar last week for this best supporting role) rules like a […]
Posted inCulture
Glory
Selma is inspiring, timely and powerful
It’s hard to think of a historical figure more intimidating to portray than the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. His life meant so much to so many, and his image and words have been so well-preserved, that to get him wrong on film would be a crime. That, in addition to Hollywood’s institutional racism, might […]
