On this Academy Awards weekend, I’ll reach back to the review I wrote about the film that earned Helen Mirren her Best Actress in a Leading Role trophy. This was first posted at my original online home. Stephen Frears’ new … Continue reading From the Archive — The Queen
As tradition mandates around these digital parts, the completion of the top ten films countdown is followed promptly by a celebration of the same year’s finest acting achievements, following the same model employed by the Academy. Had I been gifted … Continue reading Twenty Performances, or Support the Favourites
In the simplest summary, Burning is a thriller. It mingles mystery and menace in tracing the shifting, fraught relationships of three central characters. Motivations are elusive, mistrust swells, base human emotions emit low, ominous rumbles. Supposedly casual conversations gain greater … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2018 — Number One
In the most accurate reflections of the modern workplace I’ve seen in quite some time, Regina Hall fills Support the Girls with a dazzling variety of borderline breakdown moments. Hall plays Lisa, the day manager of a moderately successful Texas … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2018 — Number Two
I was a fan of Adam McKay’s The Big Short. By any reasonable assessment, the film about the mortgage crisis the leveled the economy in the first decade of this century (based on a nonfiction rage-generator written by Michael Lewis) … Continue reading The Unwatchables — Vice
This was originally written for and posted at my former online home. There was a lot of suspicious murmuring when the teaser trailer for Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette hit. It looked like a period piece, but what was that New Order song doing there? Coppola was … Continue reading From the Archive — Marie Antoinette
Roma is memory. It is the hard certainty of the testing moments that grind into the senses and the softness of incidents turned into impressions. Alfonso Cuarón has made no secret of the ways in which this drama draws upon his … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2018 — Number Three
Chloé Zhao’s The Rider is constructed with an approach that could go drastically wrong so easily, and indeed has many times in the past, even when employed by more seasoned filmmakers. The story focuses on Brady Blackburn (Brady Jandreau), a … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2018 — Number Four
Bohemian Rhapsody (Bryan Singer and Dexter Fletcher, 2018). This biography of Freddie Mercury, concentrating on his time as the frontman of Queen, is almost startling in its ineptitude. Put aside that it treats the basic chronology of the band’s history … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up — Bohemian Rhapsody; Birds of Passage; Ralph Breaks the Internet
I recently came to realize how short-sighted I’ve been in my admiration for Eighth Grade, the feature directorial debut of Bo Burnham. I marveled at the ability of a single, childless comedian in his mid-twenties to convincingly occupy the headspace … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2018 — Number Five
