The title – “Cold War”– reflects the 15-year-long stalemate between its protagonists. That said, their romance blows both hot and cold.
This expertly done, bleakly ironic film, shot in luminous black-and-white by Pawel Pawlikowski, the director of the art-house hit, “Ida,” follows a love affair from its irreverent beginning to its eerie end.
One difficulty facing anyone who writes about the lovely new movie, “Stan & Ollie” is, do people still know who Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are?
I asked a culturally conscious Gen-Xer and she knew them. How? From the oft-glimpsed poster on “Friends,” where they’re sharing a bed.
“If Beale Street Could Talk” is the sort of nice movie you’d like to take home and introduce to your parents.
That doesn’t mean it’s a movie about nice things. Racism, poverty, rape, teen pregnancy, bigoted cops – all are part of the mix. No wonder. The movie is based on a 1974 novel by James Baldwin.
“Destroyer” sounds like an old Steven Seagal movie or a new Marvel villain.
It’s neither. Rather, this is a totally unexpected picture, a kind of sunbaked film noir, starring a remarkable Nicole Kidman as an LAPD cop at the very end of her tether.
Which of the following was the reason Ruth Bader Ginsburg was turned down by a dozen Manhattan law firms in the late ’50s, after graduating at the top of her class from Harvard and Columbia?
Rivals at last year’s Oscars, Sairose Ronan (“Lady Bird”) and Margot Robbie (“I, Tonya”) both lost to Frances McDormand in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.”
In “Mary Queen of Scots,” they lose to a confused script and Josie Rourke’s confusing direction.
About 20 minutes into “VICE,” the new bio-pic about former Vice President Dick Cheney, I scribbled this note:
“Geez, this guy must’ve sat through ‘The Big Short’ a dozen times.”
Close, but, as they used to say, no cigar.
This guy directed “The Big Short.”
“She did possess that that proverbial something,” says narrator Willem Dafoe about the rock-star protagonist of “Vox Lux.”
The movie possesses that “proverbial something,” too, but whether that “something” is something you’d enjoy is debatable.
You have to be some kind of an actor to steal a movie from both Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone.
Well, Olivia Colman is some kind of an actor. The extraordinary kind.
She plays Queen Anne, an uncertain and often infantile monarch who ruled England in the early 1700’s.
Being a native Atlantan, I grew up in the last gasp of the despicable Jim Crow South. However, there were things I learned from the remarkable movie, “Green Book,” that I never knew.
Allow me to share where I’m coming from as I write about “At Eternity’s Gate,” Julian Schnabel’s wildly uneven, ultimately brilliant film about Vincent Van Gogh.
I love Van Gogh’s paintings. I love that his genius went unrecognized during his lifetime. I love that he went nuts.
As a trained professional (more or less), I’ve been called on to decipher everyone from Bergman and Tarkovsky to Cronenberg and Lynch.
I wasn’t always successful, but at least I felt comfortable at bat.
It’s Christmas and the family has gathered in Chicago. During an otherwise normal holiday dinner, the hostess, Ruth (Blythe Danner), with a sweet smile asks her guests, “And how do you two know each other?”
Given that Nick (Michael Shannon) and Bridget (Hilary Swank) are brother and sister and Ruth is their mom, it’s a bit awkward. It is also a bittersweet reminder that her Alzheimer’s isn’t getting any better.
“I’m a better Dorothy Parker than Dorothy Parker!”
So proclaims Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy), the sad-sack, sourly funny anti-heroine of “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”
Set in the early 1990s, the movie is based on the true story of a writer who, having had some success with biographies (including a New York Times best-seller), found herself at an unfortunate impasse.
“Beautiful Boy” has one beauty of a performance by Timothée Chalamet and a pretty darn good one by Steve Carell.
Whether their work is enough to make up for the film’s problems is hard to say. It may depend on your interest in the subject matter: addiction in its most devious and cruel incarnation.
Houston, we have a problem.
“First Man” is worse than a bore. It is a slog – the most crushingly earthbound movie imaginable about going to the moon.
Forget mystery or poetry; this is a paean to strong silent men and mid-century technology. It’s pure white bread, gummy and well-chewed.
One measure of the affection (and, yes, lust) that has accrued to Robert Redford over his decades in movies is, when he walks into a bank in “The Old Man and the Gun,” we reflexively wonder, is he “walking” like an old man or does he, at 82, now walk like an old man?
Actually, in keeping with the delicacy of the acting ego, Redford is playing younger than his age.
A star isn’t exactly born in the newest iteration of the well-worn classic. After all, most of us have heard of Lady Gaga somehow, somewhere.
Besides, this isn’t even – technically – her feature film debut. According to IMDB, she’s already appeared on the big screen in “Machete Kills” “Muppets Most Wanted” (as herself) and “Men in Black 3” as “alien on TV monitors.”
Those of us with a particular fondness for the old “Seinfeld” series might recall the episode in which Jerry and the gang consider going to a movie called “Rochelle, Rochelle: A Young Girl’s Strange Erotic Journey from Milan to Minsk.”
Keira Knightley’s utterly silly new movie isn’t called “Colette, Colette,” but it might as well have been.
Taken on purely architectural terms, the titular structure in “The House with a Clock in Its Walls” is a cunning cross between the “Addams Family” manse and Mother Bates’ place in “Psycho.”
Cinematically, however, it’s on far trickier turf. Eli Roth, who took torture-porn to new…heights?…in “Cabin Fever” (which I saw and admired) and the “Hostel” movies (I took a pass), makes a bid for Tim Burton territory. In many ways, he’s successful.
Tech pays tribute to fallen willow oak that dates to late 1800sFebruary 15, 2019 - 4:38 pm
Atlanta councilmember’s donation from council account to serve homeless, hungryFebruary 14, 2019 - 10:01 pm
New hospital planned in North Georgia as one reopens temporarily to protect state certificateFebruary 14, 2019 - 10:20 am
Photo Pick: “Superbowl 53 in Atlanta” by Kemet Alston with Diverse SocietyFebruary 11, 2019 - 6:38 pm
Photo Pick: RaceTrac offered free gas to TSA employees on Jan 25- Photos by Evey WilsonFebruary 4, 2019 - 10:13 am
Photo Pick: Lee Thomas is Georgia Trend’s 2019 Person of the YearJanuary 28, 2019 - 7:56 pm
