The point is made several times in the course of A COMPLETE UNKNOWN that its subject, Bob Dylan is a complete jerk. In one particularly satisfying moment, Joan Baez tosses him out of her room at the fabled Chelsea Hotel calling him just that after he makes a booty call and then withdraws into the… Read More »
WONKA
It would have been more wrong than I can enumerate not to reference 1971’s WILLIE WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY in its prequel, WONKA. Hence the purple cutaway coat, the top hat, and not just the only possible Oompa-Loompa song, but also the signature wistfulness of “Pure Imagination” by Leslie Bricusse & Anthony Newly. Screenwriters… Read More »
BEAUTIFUL BOY
The devastation of drug addiction is passionately acted and masterfully told in BEAUTIFUL BOY, a film that is savagely tender in mood and execution. Based on the memoir of the same name by Bay Area journalist David Sheff (played by Steve Carrell), and Tweaked, the companion memoir by Sheff’s son, Nic ( played by Timothée… Read More »
HOSTILES
HOSTILES is a film that takes itself very seriously. It should. Taking as its themes both human nature’s capacity for violence and its overweening need for mercy, it is not something to be approached lightly, something that director Scott Cooper took to heart in his adaptation of the late Donald E. Stewart’s manuscript. Set in… Read More »