Jeff Baena has taken as his inspiration Bocaccio’s Decameron for his sly gem of a film about female frustration and empowerment, THE LITTLE HOURS. That 14th-century book is full of bawdy tales of people from all stratas of society behaving badly, and so they do in this film set very specifically in 1347. Like the… Read More »
NERVE
NERVE is a triumph of style. It is a slight story that fails on every level but two, and those are the ones that are the most important. Do we care about what happens to our unlikely heroine? Do the increasingly dangerous dares that make up that slight story keep us on the edge of… Read More »
NOW YOU SEE ME 2
The best caper films keep us guessing even while we’re watching the caper in progress. In that way, NOW YOU SEE ME 2 succeeds admirably. The return of the The Horsemen, a band of underground magicians dedicated to truth, justice, and outsmarting everyone around them, including each other, provides several set pieces that are fine… Read More »
Unsteady UNFINISHED BUSINESS
And so in UNFINISHED BUSINESS, THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT discovers that business as usual in the 21st century is less about facing the difficulties of conformity than it is about taking a cue from the local anarchists. In the spirit of that anarchy, the film refuses to conform to the principle of… Read More »