Among the many laudable things to be found in THUNDERBOLTS: THE NEW AVENGERS is the best exploitation of the natural consonance to be heard in the name Bob since Jim Jarmusch’s DOWN BY LAW (look it up, you won’t be sorry). In addition, what we have here is a big, splashy superhero flick that doesn’t… Read More »
HARD TRUTHS — Marianne Jean-Baptiste
Click here to listen to the interview. Mike Leigh doesn’t write a script for his incisive, sometimes searing, character studies. Instead, he creates an outline and invites his actors to invent the characters and dialogue that will eventually provide the screenplay. This workshopping usually takes six months, but for HARD TRUTHS, there was not quite… Read More »
ALL OF US STRANGERS
What is real? Is it the physical world around us that, as Lily Tomlin once put it, is really nothing more than a collective hunch, or is it the emotional world we construct for ourselves from memory, and pain, and hope? Andrew Haigh’s enigmatic meditation of a film, ALL OF US STRANGERS considers just that… Read More »
THE IRON CLAW
Click here to listen to the flashback interview with Sean Durkin for MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE. It would be too easy to pigeonhole THE IRON CLAW as a gloss on toxic masculinity in our culture. To be sure, that element is mightily present in Sean Durkin’s poetic tale of fathers and sons. Based on the… Read More »
THE GOOD HOUSE
Based on the novel of the same name by Ann Leary, THE GOOD HOUSE gives us a year in the life of Hildy Good (Sigourney Weaver), descendant of the first woman accused of witchcraft during the Salem witch trials, and the most successful realtor on Boston’s North Shore. She’s tough, smart, and her family’s financial… Read More »
A MAN CALLED OVE (En man som heter Ove)
When we meet the title character of A MAN CALLED OVE, he is having a very bad day. Squabbling with shop clerks, policing his neighbors regarding littering and pets, and being fired at almost 60 from the job he’s had since he was 16. Ove’s face is a study in dour dyspepsia, and his attitude… Read More »
LOUDER THAN BOMBS
LOUDER THAN BOMBS begins with a perfect picture of family love. Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg) is marveling at his newborn as his wife Amy, (Megan Ketch) looks on beaming. Jonah is beaming, too, and he is aghast that he has forgotten to bring his wife the food she had requested when she discovered that the hospital tray… Read More »
I SMILE BACK — Sarah Silverman Lives in the Moment
Sarah Silverman is someone who has proved over and over again that she thrives on risk. Her stand-up challenges its audience while also making it laugh. Her starring turn in I SMILE BACK, based on the Amy Koppelman novel of the same name, will also challenge its audience. In a performance that is raw, visceral,… Read More »