Rudy Mancuso (played by . . . Rudy Mancuso) lives in a slightly different universe than the rest of us. Where we hear the rumble of city life, Rudy hears rhythm and music. Where we see people going about their daily lives, Rudy sees syncopated choreography. And that’s the universe that Mancuso, as director and… Read More »
WICKED LITTLE LETTERS
Social change has come to 1920s Littlehampton in the person of Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley), a foul-mouthed pub-roisterer of an Irish immigrant to this sleepy little English town. More specifically, her unconventional choices, including raising her daughter on her own and living with a man (Malachi Kirby) to whom she is not married, predictably raise… Read More »
PROBLEMISTA
There is so much to admire about Julio Torres’s PROBLEMISTA, from its magnificent manifestations of metaphor to its tweaking of subjective norms and random exploitation in a provocative satire as dark as night, but as hopeful as a buoyant full moon. The one that reigns supreme, though, is what Torres has done with the desperate,… Read More »
THE MONK AND THE GUN
Sooner or later, everyone in THE MONK AND THE GUN asks the obvious question. What would a monk want with a gun? The monk in this case is a Bhutanese Buddhist Lama, and he is about to break his meditation retreat two years early in order to perform a ritual that will need one. Actually,… Read More »
AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM
AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM is a tired pastiche of the super-hero/sci-fi genre most notable for being a perfect distillation of the phenomenon known as “super-hero fatigue”. Smothered by its been-there, seen-that vibe, it presents little to recommend it beyond Randall Park as both the embodiment of egregious exposition and the voice of reason. He… Read More »
AMERICAN FICTION
At one point in AMERICANN FICTION, the provocatively named Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), notes that there is no moral to his story. Perhaps, though, that >is< the moral. In his adaptation of Percival Everett’s novel Erasure, Cord Jefferson takes on many issues for which there are no clear-cut answers, but for which the questions… Read More »
MAY DECEMBER
The opening credits for MAY DECEMBER play over a melodramatic score of insistent, skittery chords. Those chords will return, but at moments that to us seem banal, yet in the psyche of the December part of the cast, Gracie Yoo, played by the inimitable Julianne Moore, they signal a worldview not so much at odds… Read More »
THE MARVELS
There is one thing you can say for sure about THE MARVELS. There is a whole lot of it, and most of it involves overwrought CGI effects. They are beautifully executed, but eventually become tiresome, not just for the repetitive nature of the fight sequences, but also for the sheer scale, which starts at 11… Read More »
THE KILLER
David Fincher’s THE KILLER is as methodical as its protagonist, the philosophizing hit man in the midst of pickle that challenges his core nihilistic belief system in which karma doesn’t figure, nor does luck. The irony may be lost on this unnamed protagonist, but not on us as we are treated to a cavalcade of… Read More »
THE HOLDOVERS
It is a tried and true formula, and when it works well, one that can be endearing. Not original, but endearing. And so it is with THE HOLDOVERS, Alexander Payne’s beautifully realized coming-of-age tale set at an exclusive New England boarding school where the real lessons are not the ones taught in the classrooms. This… Read More »
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