When Ruben (Riz Ahmed) first appears in Sound of Metal, he is behind a drum kit in a dank club, pounding out a heathen beat as Lou, his bandmate and girlfriend, howls at the microphone and scratches at her guitar. … Continue reading Now Playing — Sound of Metal
“There was always the feeling that you were in the presence of thwarted violence,” Orson Welles once said of the Hollywood hand he hired to help him with the screenplay of his first feature film. “It was this thrashing of … Continue reading Now Playing — Mank
Nearly twenty-five years ago, The Birdcage was released to enthusiastic reviews. There were dissenters within the critical community, though, including at least one writer I remember who took great offense at the Mike Nichols–directed film mining comedy from gay men … Continue reading Now Playing — Happiest Season
Like Jonathan Demme before him, Spike Lee isn’t particular interested in the audience. When Demme directed Stop Making Sense — still, and likely forever, the correct conclusion to any debate about the greatest concert movie ever made — he notably … Continue reading Now Playing — American Utopia
Dick Johnson made his movie debut in Cameraperson, the exceptional documentary directed by his daughter, Kirsten Johnson. The earlier feature is a memoir rendered through spare footage, mostly material Johnson shoot in her capacity as a cinematographer on dozens of … Continue reading Now Playing — Dick Johnson is Dead
Sibil Richardson doesn’t dispute the fact that she and her husband, Rob Richardson, committed a crime. She lays it out plainly. The two of them were facing a dire situation with their small business, and their place of desperation led … Continue reading Now Playing — Time
In its fundamental premise, the comic book series The Old Guard was made for modern movies. The mighty Marvel machine has fundamentally changed expectation for how big and booming action needs to be on screen in order to hold an … Continue reading Now Playing — The Old Guard
If there’s one thing that’s absolutely certain about a project that was developed by Oliver Stone and then given to Spike Lee to rework, it’s that the resulting film is not going to lack for ideas or ambition. Da 5 … Continue reading Now Playing — Da 5 Bloods
In her recent book Ninth Street Women, Mary Gabriel briefly recounts the story of a misattributed painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A portrait of Charlotte du Val d’Ognes, the piece was originally thought to be the handiwork of … Continue reading Now Playing — Beyond the Visible – Hilma af Klint
The story at the heart of the new film Never Rarely Sometimes Always is small and enormous all at once. With a low-key dramatic restraint and workaday simplicity that evokes independent filmmaking of the nineteen-eighties and earlier, writer-director Eliza Hittman … Continue reading Now Playing — Never Rarely Sometimes Always
Coffee for Two 