Tag: movie review

If you want to enjoy “Nobody” as it’s intended to be enjoyed, don’t read another word about it. Not even here.

Otherworldly and breathtakingly lovely, Gregory Kershaw and Michael Dweck’s documentary about the world of truffles – buying, selling, tasting and, most importantly, finding them – could well be subtitled “The Joy of Looking.”

Though the Screen Actors Guild Awards are only 27 years old, they have a considerable impact on their Big Bro, the 93-year-old Academy Awards. SAG’s Best Ensemble Award is considered a clear prognosticator for the eventual Best Picture winner at the Oscars. 

Can a film be both mercurial and melancholy? I wouldn’t have thought so until I saw “French Exit” – a whimsical yet downbeat movie about aging, loneliness and how to go out in style.

Sweet-natured and lightweight, about all “My Salinger Year” can really be accused of is squandering an opportunity.  

Fern (Frances McDormand), the widowed protagonist of the excellent new film, “Nomadland” is new to the nomad life. When we first meet her, she’s just lost her husband, her job, even her zip code (the year is 2011 and her hometown has literally been erased by the Great Recession).

Every once in a while, a movie gets everything so right that it’s almost impossible to explain why.

In the jaw-dropping “Promising Young Woman,” the phenomenal Carey Mulligan takes us into the very darkest heart of rape culture, touching on everything from your obvious open schoolboy rape to deeper consequences brought up by such real-life cases as Harvey Weinstein.

I’m partial to Westerns – as people partial to Westerns are likely to say. So, I expected to like Tom Hanks’ “News of the World.” What surprised me was how very much I liked it. 

“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” was the first August Wilson play I ever saw. And I saw it under ideal conditions, in the early ‘80s, in previews, before it made its official Broadway debut.

“The Prom” proves even Meryl Streep can make a mistake. For that matter, so can James Corden, Kerry Washington, Nicole Kidman and Keegan-Michael Key.

The title of David Fincher’s much-anticipated new movie is “Mank.” As in “stank.”

The best thing about “Hillbilly Elegy” is its title. As a book, it was of some interest, examining the dead-end existence that defines the South most of us don’t think about much. 

Studies in free-floating anxiety are rarely as well done as the one in “The Nest,” a sort of haunted-house movie in which, despite hints to the contrary, the house is probably just fine.

Sofia Coppola has a huge crush on Bill Murray. So what? Most of us, male or female, have a huge crush on Bill Murray. For decades.

“The Trial of the Chicago 7,” Aaron Sorkin’s cracklingly good Netflix movie about what happened in Judge Julius Hoffman’s (Frank Langella) courtroom.