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Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Street Could Talk Does James Baldwin Proud

By Chuck Wilson

Dec 24, 2018

Baldwin’s central story, dialogue and time-jumping narrative structure are all in place, but so, too, is a sumptuous visual style that serves to deepen the novelist’s themes of racial injustice and the powerful countering force of love

Searching for Ingmar Bergman Is a Cheery Toasting of a Most Somber Genius

By Alan Scherstuhl

Dec 24, 2018

... The director of Rosenstrasse, Rosa Luxemburg and Sheer Madness is tracking Bergman, toasting him and his work with his collaborators and some high-profile fans

Welcome to Marwen Crashes Into the Limits of Hollywood’s Imagination

By Alan Scherstuhl

Dec 21, 2018

At times, as it dissolves between scenes of its cast as literal toy dolls machine-gunning Nazis in the made-up Belgian town of Marwen, Zemeckis’ movie seems an inquisition into the limits of the director’s own imagination

Emily Blunt Rules, and Mary Poppins Returns Is Not at All Atrocious

By Alan Scherstuhl

Dec 19, 2018

True to the spirit of the chipper, somewhat aimless live-action Disney day killers that inspired it, Rob Marshall’s Mary Poppins Returns gets better the further it wanders from its actual story.

Aquaman Proves Superheroes Are Better Down Where It’s Wetter

By Alan Scherstuhl

Dec 18, 2018

Not incidental to Aquaman’s pleasures is its vision of a mixed-race hero, played by a mixed-race actor, fighting to protect and understand clashing aspects of his heritage

Ben Is Back Pits a Dazzling Julia Roberts Against the Opioid Scourge

By Alan Scherstuhl

Dec 17, 2018

With the quickest blink or nervy glance, Roberts communicates to us both what her character, an ordinary woman named Holly Burns, has convinced everyone around her to think she’s feeling but also all of her secret doubts, fury and anguish

Cities Roll, Fight and Eat Each Other in the Otherwise Meh Mortal Engines

By Alan Scherstuhl

Dec 13, 2018

The film plays as if a three-hour epic has been sliced down to size in the editing, but only the scenes establishing character and context have been cut

Into the Spider-Verse Is the Best Superhero Movie Since The Dark Knight

By Alan Scherstuhl

Dec 12, 2018

It sets a host of alternative Spider-folk running amok in the New York City of Brooklyn teen Miles Morales, the mixed-race Spider-Man (his father is black and his mother Latinx) invented for the comics in 2011 by Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli

In Mary Queen of Scots, Great Women Face Hard Truths About Wielding Power

By Alan Scherstuhl

Dec 11, 2018

The actresses share only one scene in the film, but Mary Queen of Scots sets them up in counterpoint, two divergent approaches to the question of how women who wield power can actually govern the men around them

Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma Is a Masterpiece of Memory

By Yolanda Machado

Dec 10, 2018

The writer-director shot Roma in chronological order, without showing the cast the script, unveiling it to the actors the same way it is for the audience, piece by piece, a chance to marinate in each moment as it plays out

With Mowgli, Netflix Has Its First Blockbuster

By Alan Scherstuhl

Dec 6, 2018

This time, though, the lessons are urgent, the jungle threatened by man, the wicked tiger Shere Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch) a true terror vowing to one day taste that boy’s blood

As Fascism Rises, Schindler’s List Has Become Almost Radical

By Alan Scherstuhl

Dec 5, 2018

Today, I’m still awed by the film’s scope and scale, by its relentless energy and attention to detail, by its interest in faces and names and coats and belongings

Kore-eda’s Big-Hearted Shoplifters Toasts the Family That Steals Together

By Bilge Ebiri

Dec 4, 2018

Based on a collection of true news items about exactly what the film’s title promises, Kore-eda’s story centers around a household that at first might appear to be a somewhat ordinary family that has merely fallen on hard times

Emma Stone and The Favourite’s Royal Women Scheme Deliciously

By Bilge Ebiri

Dec 3, 2018

It’s the early 18th century, there’s a war on with France, and the persistently ill, somewhat childish Anne struggles both to assert her authority and to preserve her kingdom and her crown

Netflix’s Exquisite Happy as Lazzaro Asks: What’s to Live for After a Life of Toil?

By Alan Scherstuhl

Nov 27, 2018

This time, we meet the sharecropping peasants of the remote village of Inviolata, living lives of seasonal toil, lives that look — except for the occasional radio or lightbulb — like they might have a century or so ago

Paul Dano’s Wildlife Is a Superb Drama of a Fracturing American Family

By Alan Scherstuhl

Nov 26, 2018

The couple has begun to discover that raw truth that, around 1960, American novelists and filmmakers were only starting to face in their art: that the post-war dream of a little house and a little family just might not be enough to ensure happiness

The Latest Robin Hood Robs From the Past to Give the Present Nothing

By Kristen Yoonsoo Kim

Nov 21, 2018

The actual 2018 Robin Hood remains a haphazard action thriller taking place sometime during the Crusades, with Taron Egerton basically reprising his breakout Kingsman role as a scrappy normie getting recruited and trained for skilled combat

Lee Chang-dong’s Burning Torches Sex, Obsession and Class

By Bilge Ebiri

Nov 21, 2018

Lee Chang-dong’s dexterity with the telling minutiae of human interactions ensures that Burning makes for an emotionally gripping film

Creed II Follows Up a Classic With (Sigh) an Okay Rocky Movie

By Alan Scherstuhl

Nov 20, 2018

The story concerns sort of a play date between the kids fathered by the first generation of Rocky boxers: Creed versus the son of Dolph Lundgren’s Ivan Drago, who in Rocky IV was built up as pretty much the most devastating weapon in the Soviet nuclear arsenal

Maria by Callas Strips an Opera Great of Her Agency

By Simon Abrams

Nov 20, 2018

Volf supports his interpretation of Callas’ personality with sound bites from her understandably guarded televised appearances, all of which devolve into terse discussions about her years-long romance with Onassis (before and after his marriage to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis)

Film Reviews

Dick Moves

Ms. Ginsburg Goes to Washington

Film Reviews

Dick Moves

Ms. Ginsburg Goes to Washington

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