At one point in AMERICANN FICTION, the provocatively named Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), notes that there is no moral to his story. Perhaps, though, that >is< the moral. In his adaptation of Percival Everett’s novel Erasure, Cord Jefferson takes on many issues for which there are no clear-cut answers, but for which the questions… Read More »
ASTEROID CITY
Wes Anderson’s ASTEROID CITY presents us a dream within a dream as it ponders our place in the cosmos by setting its story in three separate realities that bump into each other the way subatomic particles swarm around an atomic nucleus. Is it synchronicity or chance or some other cosmic law of which humanity is… Read More »
THE BATMAN
One thing you can say about THE BATMAN without fear of contradiction is that there is a lot of it. Clocking in at three hours or so, it packs in enough plot for a trilogy, as though all concerned fretted that this might be their only shot at the rebooted DC franchise. Fear not, though.… Read More »
NO TIME TO DIE
And so we have come to the end of Daniel Craig’s tenure as 007. NO TIME TO DIE provides both him and us, with a veritable cornucopia of Bond-ness, from a supervillain’s lair on a remote island, to the finely honed quip we’ve come to expect as James takes out a minion with yet another… Read More »
THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY — PART 1
THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY — PART 1 is not unlike its iconic heroine, Katniss Everdeen. It’s bold, headstrong, no-nonsense, and impatient to get on with things. It begins almost directly from whence the last installment of the saga left off, and with little if any exposition about anything that happened before. For example, why those… Read More »
CADILLAC RECRDS
Writer/director Darnell Martin has an obvious passion for the blues and for the men and women who sang them. It comes across in every frame of CADILLAC RECORDS, based on the true story of Chess Records, whose founder, Leonard Chess, had a penchant for handing out Cadillacs to his recording artists. Executive producer and pop… Read More »
BROKEN FLOWERS
There are those of us who, with wild abandon and without apology, worship at the altar of Jarmusch. There is in his off-kilter rhythms and deliberately deadpan aesthetic a peculiar, and peculiarly resonant, insight into how it is that human beings conduct their lives. His films, including his latest, BROKEN FLOWERS, are peopled with characters,… Read More »
BROKEN FLOWERS — DVD
Jim Jarmusch’s BROKEN FLOWERS has been accused of being his most accessible film. Perhaps it’s because the narrative is more linear than his last film, the equally brilliant COFFEE AND CIGARETTES. Perhaps it’s because its star, Bill Murray, plays a character that is facing his mid-life crisis in a way that is more identifiable than… Read More »