Posted inColumns, Eleanor Ringel Cater

‘Three Thousand Years of Longing’ – George Miller’s slightly-flawed genie movie

For George Miller, the filmmaker who’s had a hand in such fantastical beasts as Babe, the sheepherding pig, and Imperator Furiosa (aka, Charlize Theron), the one-armed warrior, the tale of an academic and the djinn she accidentally releases while at a conference in Istanbul, is almost business as usual.

Posted inColumns, Eleanor Ringel Cater

‘Where the Crawdads Sing” – Movie version of bestseller ‘lacks emotional heft’

I still don’t know what a crawdad is or, for that matter, if it indeed sings. But that matters less to me than how surprisingly wispy “Where the Crawdads Sing” is.  Delia Owens’s debut novel was a phenomenon that, as of last winter, spent 150 weeks on the New York Time best seller list.

Posted inColumns, Eleanor Ringel Cater

‘The Last Movie Stars’ – Ethan Hawke’s tender take of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward

“The Last Movie Stars,” Ethan Hawke’s six-part series on Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, is a pandemic epic, a spectacular amalgamation of clips and interviews and Ken Burns-style voice-overs by famous actors that takes its form from the Zoom culture COVID has forced on us for the last several years.