Review: TÁR
I am quite late with this review (the film is out in theaters) because I'm still trying to figure out how best to give it a fair shake. I was…
I am quite late with this review (the film is out in theaters) because I'm still trying to figure out how best to give it a fair shake. I was…
Talk about a film arriving at just the right moment! This gripping French drama about a young woman in the early 1960s who gets pregnant and has to go through…
This wonderful road trip drama traverses the Iranian landscape with a family and their dog. Along for the ride are a mother (Pantea Panahiha) and father (Hasan Majuni) and their…
This is a really gritty and entirely engaging little film. It's about Nikki (co-director Celine Held) and her 5-year-old daughter Little (Zhaila Farmer) who're living on the edge underground in…
This quirky coming-of-age rom-com was one of my favorite films of the year. The leads, Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman, are unknowns, but there are some fabulous cameos from A-listers,…
Adapted from a short story by Haruki Murikami, one of my favorite authors, Drive My Car is a haunting drama about love and grief and reckoning. It centers on two…
Set in the gorgeous wide open expanses of 1925 Wyoming, The Power of the Dog from Oscar-winning director Jane Campion (The Piano, Angel at My Table) is downright suffocating a lot of…
CODA doesn’t have the dramatic heft of Children of a Lesser God (for which deaf actress Marlee Matlin won an Academy Award), or the grittier themes of Oscar nominee Sound…
The four women in Materna whose stories collide in a New York subway could not be more different. But they are connected by narratives exploring the theme of "mother", what…
EGOT*. If you know what that is, you may also be aware of Rita Moreno's body of work. This film about her is a fairly straightforward tribute documentary, with talking…
This week I chose films from the 40s, 50s, 60s, 90s, and 00s. Two are from the same director. They take place in Rome and Paris and Berlin and Tokyo…
At the center of this wonderful musical documentary are Ilmar and Aldo López-Gavilán, musician brothers separated for much of their lives by US-Cuban politics. Ilmar left Cuba at the age…
Shot in secret and smuggled out of Iran, There is No Evil is a four-part film centered on capital punishment and its effect on the men who are forced to…
Update: I began my Oscar viewing thinking the show was fun and creative, but it went totally off the rails about half way through and ended in the most abrupt…
UPDATE: In what I found to be a rather boring presentation of the awards, I ended up with a score of 16/23. Not too bad all things considered. It was…