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
It is a pleasing irony that Marriage Story begins as the legal union of the title is effectively at its endpoint. Theater director Charlie (Adam Driver) and actress Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) have been married for several years, working together on … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2019 — Number Five
Despite protests to the contrary and the little fact that director Martin Scorsese is just a few weeks away from the first shooting day on his next feature film, The Irishman feels like a closing statement. Of course, it is … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2019 — Number Six
I admire Jordan Peele’s sophomore directorial effort for a lot of reasons, chief among them its overstuffed grab bag of fierce, pointed ideas. In Us, Peele heaves weighty social commentary concepts like chunks of glistening coal into an already well-stoked … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2019 — Number Seven
Under the Silver Lake (David Robert Mitchell, 2019). No one quite knew what to do with writer-director David Robert Mitchell’s follow-up to the indie horror hit It Follows. A shaggy modern detective story, Under the Silver Lake plays like Robert … Continue reading Then Playing — Under the Silver Lake; Apollo 11; Joker
Coffee for Two 