Remember all those movies where the protagonists somehow switched bodies? (“Freaky Friday” — both versions — being the shining example).In the same vein, I really wish Amy Schumer and Rebel Wilson could’ve switched movies.
Tag: Eleanor Ringel Cater
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‘Cold War’ – a well-acted and ‘luminous’ black-and-white movie
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.
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‘Stan & Ollie’ – a poignant, loving look into iconic comedy team
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.
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‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ – a quietly poetic, yet courageous, movie
“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.
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‘Mary Queen of Scots’ – a confusing movie with noble intentions
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.
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‘VICE’ – movie depicts how Dick Cheney changed the role of VP
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.”
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‘Vox Lux’ – movie starts with a bang, leads to boredom
“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.
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‘The Favourite’ – Olivia Colman’s Queen Anne steals the show
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.
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‘Kusama: Infinity’ – an extraordinary documentary about Yayoi Kusama
To echo the old saying, I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like. However, I know even less about artists, so I had no inkling that I would fall so hard for “Kusama: Infinity,” an extraordinary documentary about Yayoi Kusama, whom I’d never heard of.
Shame on me. She’s the world’s top-selling living female artist. And deservedly so. As Heather Lenz’s movie makes abundantly clear, Kusama is an astonishing original.
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‘The Post’ -Steven Spielberg wants us to believe in newspapers
The man who made us believe in man-eating Great Whites, homesick extraterrestrials and re-booted dinosaurs now wants us to take a real leap of faith.
Steven Spielberg wants us to believe in newspapers.
“The Post,” as in the Washington Post, is in many ways the sort of rousing old-fashioned newspaper movie they used to make in the ‘40s and’50s. Tough-talking editors with rolled-up sleeves. Deadlines stretched to the breaking point. Hard-boiled reporters for whom dirty tricks are just business as usual when it comes to getting the story.
