#52 — Haley Lu Richardson as Casey in Columbus (Kogonada, 2017) In Columbus, Haley Lu Richardson plays a young woman waiting for her life to start. Intelligent and engaged in the world around her, Casey is about one year out … Continue reading Greatish Performances #52
Crossing Delancey (Joan Micklin Silver, 1988). This gentle romantic comedy has the wafting charm of a fable. Isabelle (Amy Irving) is an independent New Yorker with a habit of dabbling with the wrong men. When her grandmother (Reizl Bozyk) enlists … Continue reading Then Playing — Crossing Delancey; The Climb; Don’t Let Go
Four men gather at the edge of a nation that simultaneously exalts and oppresses them. They are famous, and at least a couple of them are generously compensated for the actions that earned them notoriety. They also are confined to … Continue reading Now Playing — One Night in Miami
Promising Young Woman is a gleaming arsenic lollipop with a razor blade hidden in the middle. It’s enticing and delicious but it also induces queasy wooziness, and then, with the barest warning, it cuts deep. The film is merciless and … Continue reading Now Playing — Promising Young Woman
Driveways (Andrew Ahn, 2020). There are few stories of bonding more cliched than the sad, lonely child who befriends a crusty elderly fellow, both growing in charming and moving ways because of the relationship. That makes it borderline miraculous that … Continue reading Then Playing — Driveways; Babyteeth; Collective
With Soul, Pete Docter positions himself as Pixar’s official conceptualizer of the elusive inner lives of humanity. That’s a lofty pronouncement, to be sure, and is especially hoity-toity to apply it to films that are, at their cores, family entertainment. … Continue reading Now Playing — Soul
I’m Your Woman (Julia Hart, 2020). Set in the nineteen-seventies, I’m Your Woman casts Rachel Brosnahan as Jean, whose small-time-crook husband (Bill Heck) goes missing not long after he presents her with a baby acquired under mysterious circumstances. For their … Continue reading Then Playing — I’m Your Woman; The Vast of Night; Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
#1 — Boyhood (Richard Linklater, 2014) If the best film directors can be said to have central preoccupations that run through their entire oeuvre like a central nervous system, then Richard Linklater’s is the stealthy, patient alchemy that manifests when … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number One
Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross, 2020). Depicting the last day of operation for a Las Vegas dive bar, Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets accurately captures the wounded rhythms of a place that serves as a refuge … Continue reading Then Playing — Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets; Tenet; Lovers Rock
When Wonder Woman arrived in movie houses three and a half years ago, there was a lot riding on the amazing Amazon’s shoulders. Although superheroes were solidly established as the dominant building blocks for Hollywood blockbusters, the various films efforts … Continue reading Now Playing — Wonder Woman 1984
