There are two villains in THE GOOD NURSE, the based on the true-crime book by Charles Graeber, and the first English-language film from Tobias Lindholm (ANOTHER ROUND, THE HUNT). One villain is the serial killer, Charlie Cullen (Eddie Redmayne) who worked for years as a nurse killing patients while raising suspicions, but never prosecutions, at… Read More »
ELVIS
It’s the moment when Elvis (Austin Butler) first asserts his independence from the tentacled hold that his manager, Col. Tom Parker (Tom Hanks) has, and, alas, will always have on him. Elvis at this point in his nascent career has been labeled a threat to the American way of life in the conformist 1950s onto… Read More »
THE PHANTOM OF THE OPEN
In THE PHANTOM OF THE OPEN, we see the audacity of innocence. Based on the life, and wholly unlikely exploits, of Maurice Flitcroft, a name that all but demands to have a shaggy-dog story attached to it, it reveals how a man with no formal training in golf found himself competing at the British Open,… Read More »
I’M CHARLIE WALKER — Patrick Gilles Interview
Click here to listen to the interview. I’ve lived in San Francisco for many, many years, and yet I’d never heard the story of Charlie Walker, an African-American man with a dream and a real gift for playing the system against itself. I was delighted to learn about that part of my city’s history… Read More »
HOUSE OF GUCCI
HOUSE OF GUCCI is a ramshackle accretion of muddled plots studded with oddly incoherent character development and performances that range from stock (Al Pacino) to enigmatic (Adam Driver). This overlong effort takes a tale of sex, money, and power among the super rich and renders it into a dull slog brightened only by Lady Gaga’s… Read More »
THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE
For all the meticulous detail in THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE about the early life of Tammy Faye Bakker, this biopic about the rise of fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker has an ending that is curiously sparse. It’s not just Tammy Faye’s second marriage to Roe Messner that is erased, though he does… Read More »
THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
Based on the remarkable life of James Brooke, EDGE OF THE WORLD is an introspective film about how an Englishman became the Raja of Sulawak. Such was his fame in Victorian England that Joseph Conrad used him as the model for the title character in his novel, Lord Jim, and rich women proposed marriage to… Read More »
DREAM HORSE
DREAM HORSE is the heartwarming and uplifting film that is sets out to be. Unpretentious as the working class folks that this based-on-actual-events story celebrates, it tells the classic underdog story of the race horse that evokes sneers from professionals and aristocrats before he puts them all in their places. If it sounds formulaic, it… Read More »
ENFANT TERRIBLE
At one point, late in in ENFANT TERRIBLE, the titular character of this bio-pic, omnisexual filmmaker and agent provacateur of the German New Wave, Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Oliver Masucci), calls himself an uber-pig. It’s part boast, part confession, and part apology. As seen in Oskar Roehler’s stunningly oneiric film, they are all consistent with the… Read More »
THE COURIER
Based on a true story, THE COURIER takes us back to the Cold War and the palpable threat of nuclear annihilation. Once again, we are reminded that it was as much luck as it was diplomacy or mutually assured destruction that prevented World War III. In this case, the good luck of two people for… Read More »
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