Stillwater (Tom McCarthy, 2021). Stillwater is a fascinating hybrid. It begins and ends like a more realistic, sober-minded riff on one of Liam Neeson’s Taken or Taken-adjacent movies, with a Oklahoma roughneck in place of a well-trained oak tree with … Continue reading Then Playing — Stillwater; Platoon; Freebie and the Bean
The Many Saints of Newark (Alan Taylor, 2021). Nearly fifteen years after an exceptional series finale that stirred controversy among people who evidently misinterpreted everything that had come before, The Sopranos gets an utterly needless revival with a prequel feature … Continue reading Then Playing — The Many Saints of Newark; George Carlin’s American Dream; Old
The Ex-Mrs. Bradford (Stephen Roberts, 1936). No one played a well-to-do gent dapperly cavorting through a murder mystery like William Powell. In between turns as Nick Charles, he plays Dr. Lawrence Bradford in this spiked trifle, reuniting with his ex-wife … Continue reading Then Playing — The Ex-Mrs. Bradford; Death on the Nile; Moonfall
Parallel Mothers (Pedro Almodóvar, 2021). Pedro Almodóvar is on solid footing with Parallel Mothers, a film that includes some of his regular preoccupations relating to family, feminism, and the complicated snarl of personal history. He also incorporates considerations of the … Continue reading Then Playing — Parallel Mothers; Drive My Car; The Mitchells vs. the Machines
Free Guy (Shawn Levy, 2021). This high-concept comedy about the dawning sentience of a non-player, bystander character in a Grand Theft Auto–style video game is inane chaos. Ryan Reynolds plays Guy, who evolves into heroism from his assigned role of … Continue reading Then Playing — Free Guy; Attica; Inside Daisy Clover
The King of Staten Island (Judd Apatow, 2020). This film represents a new nadir for director Judd Apatow’s exhausting tendency to develop a container ship’s worth of individual scenes with only the vaguest concern of how they might fit together … Continue reading Then Playing — The King of Staten Island; The Way We Were; Licorice Pizza
Wuthering Heights (William Wyler, 1939). This adaptation of the classic 1847 Emily Brontë novel of the same name is a signature example of the epic sweep filmmakers could conjure up on soundstages during Hollywood’s golden age, well before it was … Continue reading Then Playing — Wuthering Heights; Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street; Logan’s Run
Nightmare Alley (Guillermo del Toro, 2021). Director Guillermo del Toro brings characteristic visual panache and gleeful excitement over the most lurid doings to this adaptation of a 1946 William Lindsay Gresham novel that was previously brought to the screen not … Continue reading Then Playing — Nightmare Alley; Moonstruck; Greenland
Gas Food Lodging (Allison Anders, 1992). Here is early nineteen-nineties independent U.S. filmmaking in all its charm and shortcoming. Gas Food Lodging is a small story rendered with intimate emotional detail and acted with wildly varying ability. Simultaneously endearing and … Continue reading Then Playing — Gas Food Lodging; The Tragedy of Macbeth; C’mon C’mon
Respect (Liesl Tommy, 2021). In her feature directorial debut, Liesl Tommy brings a lot of panache to the familiar form of a music icon’s biopic. Tracing the youth and professional ascendance of Aretha Franklin (played in childhood by Skye Dakota … Continue reading Then Playing — Respect; Red Rocket; Belfast
Coffee for Two 