Right around ten years ago, I gave myself an ambitious but manageable task. In response to the torrent of lists tallying up the best films from the ten-year span that ended when 2009 gave way to 2010, I took my … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — An Introduction
Officially, the new film featuring characters culled from DC Comics is called simply Birds of Prey. After a disappointing opening weekend at the box office, several theater chains have conspicuously revised their marquees and websites to affix the the name … Continue reading Now Playing — Birds of Prey
When Tom Hanks tells you to turn the lights back on, you turn the lights back on. After Parasite secured its historic win in the Best Picture category and the first producer delivered their acceptance speech, the show producers dimmed … Continue reading Parasite by the Oscar Lights
I still love watching the Oscars by Karen Han To be simultaneously devoted to modern cinematic art and the Academy Awards is an invitation to perpetual heartbreak, and I type that as someone with fairly mainstream tastes (as opposed to … Continue reading Outside Reading — Oscars Eve edition
With the annual Academy Awards ceremony mere days away and the sharing of my personal assessment of the previous year’s ten finest films duly completed, tradition holds that I put my pontificating about performance into the format of an Actors … Continue reading Twenty Performances, or Women and Chill Don First
The stories we tell ourselves shape our sense of history, and our sense of history shapes the stories we tell ourselves. Legacy is built from both what actually happened and what we wish had happened, what we convince ourselves is … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2019 — Number One
When it was announced that Greta Gerwig was following up her autobiographical triumph Lady Bird with a new adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, a classic novel that had been transferred to the screen many, man times before, it … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2019 — Number Two
Bong Joon-ho has the panache of a master showman and the cunning of a regime-toppling agitator. His films are trenchant commentary gussied up into inspired entertainments, impressing as dervishes of audacity. Parasite, representing Bong’s return to South Korean filmmaking after … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2019 — Number Three
That Lulu Wang drew from a personal story to craft The Farewell inarguably adds to the aura around the film. What seems like high concept invention — a family conspiring to hit a terminal cancer diagnosis from a sweet, elderly … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2019 — Number Four
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma, 2019). Set near the close of the eighteenth century, Céline Sciamma’s achingly refined, French drama is about a female artist (Noémie Merlant) who is recruited to surreptitiously paint the portrait of a … Continue reading Then Playing — Portrait of a Lady on Fire; Judy; For Sama
Coffee for Two 