In an era when Christmas, or at the least the merchandising for it, begins sometime in late August, there is a certain charm in THE MAN WHO INVENTED CHRISTMAS, which looks back to a time when it barely registered as a blip on the cultural radar. And the the to origins of the story that… Read More »
SUBURBICON
Chekov’s three sisters had their dream of a perfect life in Moscow. The increasingly desperate and frazzled denizens of SUBURBICON have Aruba, a place where the food is exotic, the golf is for couples, and the long arm of the law cannot reach them. Alas, this deliciously stylized evocation of the dark side of the… Read More »
LOVING VINCENT
The subjects of Vincent Van Gogh’s masterpieces come to startling, vivid, and enchanting life in LOVING VINCENT, a film of enormous beauty and sharp insight. Created by rotoscoping actors, and then painting each animation cell by hand in oils, the result is an immersive experience of how the artist saw the world while also questioning… Read More »
DUNKIRK
Spinoza once opined that you couldn’t use words to describe God, because by choosing any one or several, you would be eliminating the infinite nature of the deity. That essential inadequacy of words drives much of Christopher Nolan’s stunning film, DUNKIRK. Stunning in many sense of that word. Hence, we don’t learn that Tommy (Fionn… Read More »
PREVENGE
Written and directed with a suitably biting edge by star Alice Lowe, PREVENGE is a droll and razor sharp black comedy of a horror film that considers the terrors of pregnancy and the maternal instinct gone askew. Very askew. Lowe, with a perfect deadpan sense of purpose, wields her kitchen knife as an instrument of… Read More »
ALIEN: COVENANT
ALIEN COVENANT is a mixed bag. As a horror movie, it is unimpeachable, adding an extra self-refractive layer of pleasure to an audience that knows exactly what is lurking there in the giant deserted spaceship that our intrepid space colonists discover. As a vehicle for advancing the meta-story of the Alien franchise, it is far… Read More »
TWENTY TWENTY-FOUR
You could, if so inclined, sit back and enjoy Richard Mundy’s counterintuitively dynamic film, TWENTY TWENTY- FOUR, merely as an engrossing study of a loner going slowly mad in isolation. As the difference between reality and madness builds to a fever pitch, the mystery of what exactly is happening in Roy’s underground bunker matches the… Read More »
TOMMY’S HONOUR
TOMMY’S HONOUR, about the beginnings of modern golf and the young man responsible for that, unfolds with the same stately grace of that game. It’s an admirable effort, rather than one that will get the adrenaline pumping, with fine performances, albeit ones that seem muted amid the prevailing decorum of 19th-century Britain. It was a… Read More »
SIX ROUNDS
SIX ROUNDS is an exquisitely realized inner monologue. A perfect distillation of character and mood expressed in silence and in shouts; of emotion visualized through quick cuts and slow motion into a tone poem of stark eloquence with nary a flaw in its running time. Told is six episodes, it explores the aftermath of the… Read More »
ASSASSIN’S CREED
I am not familiar with the video game on which ASSASSIN’S CREED is based, so I cannot speak to whether or not this cinematic translation has captured its essence. I can speak, however, to the befuddling bifurcation of said translation. Part straight-up action film, part would-be contemplation of the pros and cons of free will,… Read More »
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