MINARI is a powerful contemplation of family, faith, and the American Dream. Seen through the lens of 7-year-old David (Alan S. Kim in a stunning, unselfconscious turn), whose Korean-born parents have moved him, his older sister Anne (Noel Cho), and eventually their grandmother (scene-stealing Youn Yuh-jung) to rural 1980s Arkansas in search of a life… Read More »
WILD MOUNTAIN THYME
John Patrick Shanley’s WILD MOUNTAIN THYME, based on his play Outside Mulligan, is a charmer of an Irish muddle. Committed in its gentle eccentricity, it essays to find the mythic in the quotidien and darn near pulls it off. At least sly humor abounds as the determined Rosemary (Emily Blunt) pines for Anthony (Jamie Dornan)… Read More »
KILLING THE COLORADO — Jeffrey Friedman Interview
When I spoke with Jeffrey Friedman by phone on June 20, 2016, the first thing I wanted him to talk about was why, even after all the mainstream reporting on the subject, there doesn’t seem to be the sort of public awareness that an imminent threat of running out of water should engender. His Discovery… Read More »
AT ANY PRICE
The genius of Ramin Bahrani’s AT ANY PRICE is the way it talks about things without actually talking about them. This is a story of cause-and-effect, with the failings of a father reflecting the corruption of the American Dream. Though it takes place in the heartland, on that most homespun and wholesome of enterprises, the… Read More »
Ramin Bahrani Talks AT ANY PRICE
There was something about the halting way in which Ramin Bahrani talked about Roger Ebert that said so much more than the moving words he spoke. Ebert had been an early champion of Bahrani’s work, and when I spoke with the filmmaker on April 8 2013, it was just after Ebert’s death, and my first… Read More »