A MOST VIOLENT YEAR begins, appropriately enough, with its protagonist, Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) running. Though this is merely jogging through the snowy landscape of 1981 New York, he will spend the rest of the film running more purposefully either literally, figuratively, or both, as he scrambles to overcome fate and the fickleness of human… Read More »
EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS and Missing the Mark
Lovely to look at with some fine performances in a muddled execution.
THE HOMESMAN
Tommy Lee Jones is a dour man, at least on screen. His carefully cultivated persona is a laconic one of few words and little patience. It is a character that he plays to perfection, and in THE HOMESMAN,he imbues it with a wonderful, understated quirkiness that makes his star quality all the more charismatic. As… Read More »
THE BETTER ANGELS
No plaster saint, nor marble effigy of Abraham Lincoln is to be found in THE BETTER ANGELS. Based on the recollections of Lincoln’s surviving family, as spoken by his cousin about his boyhood in Indiana, this is a Lincoln before the legends had taken root, the Lincoln of great promise whose intellectual curiosity and love… Read More »
JOHN WICK
JOHN WICK is a sleek and unrepentant film about revenge and redemption. Set in a parallel world to ours, one populated by criminals who live by a strict set of rules, conventions, and etiquette, it is a dark fantasy of violence in which the hero isn’t the pacifist, it’s the guy who really loves his… Read More »
GIRL CUT IN TWO, A (La Fille Coupee en Deux)
It’s a very long way to go for a punch line, but Claude Chabrol fearlessly meanders along for the two hours it takes him to get there with A WOMAN CUT IN TWO, based loosely and badly on the infamous early 20th century Thaw-White murder scandal at whose center was Evelyn Nesbitt, the so-called Girl… Read More »
FROZEN RIVER
Two women driving in the snow in the dead of a winter night slip from the shoreline onto the broad, imposing expanse of a frozen lake. Itâs not the action of people who have any choice in the matter and in FROZEN RIVER, the reasons for this action are spelled out with a quiet intensity… Read More »
DUCHESS, THE
THE DUCHESS is a middling film about a larger-than-life historical character from the 18th century. That would be Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (Keira Knightley), fashion icon, darling of the public and of the media, she was beautiful, rich, used her position and fame to influence politics, and married to a man who was indifferent to… Read More »
W
With all the hubbub in Oliver Stone’s W, it might be easy to miss the key line in it. That would be the one delivered by W himself. He’s having a heart-to-heart with the clergyman who is shepherding him through his born-again experience. In a moment of anguish, he bemoans the fact that people just… Read More »
BALLAST
Set in the rural Mississippi delta, BALLAST brings home the effects and consequences of self-imposed isolation with one arresting image: a stain on a wall. It got there when Lawrence (Michael J. Smith, Sr.) attempted suicide in the wake of his twin brother’s death. Though a neighbor was there to check on him, though that… Read More »
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