A key moment in the fact-based JOE BELL comes early one as the titular character (Mark Wahlberg), a working-class man from a small town in Oregon, is told by his adolescent son, Jadin (Reid Miller) that he is being bullied at school for being gay. It’s two revelations, and Joe doesn’t miss a beat telling… Read More »
WRATH OF MAN
In WRATH OF MAN, we find Jason Statham and Guy Ritchie re-united in a film about the imperative of family values and the dangers of boredom. The result is a bloody wonderland of moral relativity and of an honor system that has nothing to do with Testaments Old or New. While is doesn’t give Mr.… Read More »
AQUAMAN
The good news is that Momoa and his mammoth charm more than carry a film that is decidedly not the most original of super-hero tales.
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 »
SUBURBICON
Chekov’s three sisters had their dream of a perfect life in Moscow. The increasingly desperate and frazzled denizens of SUBURBICON have Aruba, a place where the food is exotic, the golf is for couples, and the long arm of the law cannot reach them. Alas, this deliciously stylized evocation of the dark side of the… Read More »
COLUMBUS
Casey (Haley Lu Richardson) notes early on that one of the many architectural treasures of the titular COLUMBUS features elements that are off-center, but are still in harmonious balance. It is, as with so much else in this emotionally explosive but soft-spoken film, an exquisitely realized metaphor. A tale of seeming opposites with surprising and… Read More »
IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE (Kraftidioten)
IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE is a bracingly original foray into very black humor. Set in the arctic-lite of rural Norway, it is a tale of relentless pursuit, clueless hubris, and the eccentricities that long winters provoke in the population. Writer Kim Fupz Aakeson and director Hans Petter Moland serve up this arch film about fathers and sons… Read More »
LITTLE MEN — Ira Sachs & Theo Taplitz Interview
I’m still not convinces that Theo Taplitz >isn’t< a well-preserved 40-year-old masquerading as an adolescent. Still too young to vote, he’s already made two short films that are whimsical, yet solid (click here for links), and given a performance in Ira Sachs’ LITTLE MEN that is wise beyond his years. We started my interview with… Read More »
LITTLE MEN
There is no phase of a parent-child relationship more fraught with peril, and for which either party is less prepared, than when the latter learns that the former is not infallible. LITTLE MEN portrays that milestone with intelligence and sensitivity for all concerned as two 13-year-olds become fast friends only to have their relationship threatened… Read More »
Matt Ross is CAPTAIN FANTASTIC
CAPTAIN FANTASTIC opens with a deer hunt. It’s graphic. It’s violent. Yet there is something about it that shows enormous respect for the animal, and for the young man who brings it down using only a knife. This is not sport, it’s food. That sequence was the first thing I brought up on July 7,… Read More »