A provincial man who’s trying to find a job stays with his city cousin in Ceylan’s masterful third feature that probes issues of personal stasis and social alienation in contemporary Turkish society, marked by restrained performances that accrue a quiet emotional depth.
Continue reading “Distant (2002)”
Catalan filmmaker Carla Simon made her name with the tiny, plotless, yet moving family dramas Summer 1993 and Alcarras. Now, with Romeria, she expands her ambitions into a magical realist mystery but, sadly, the leap has not been made gracefully. A few strikingly beautiful moments aside, Romeria is a frustratingly dull and repetitive film, taking […]
Continue reading “Romeria”
Rohmer’s provocative final entry from his ‘Six Moral Tales’ calls attention to the temptation of extramarital affairs, as a man in a happy marriage contemplates putting his immoral theoretical thoughts into practice.
Continue reading “Love in the Afternoon (1972)”
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy offers an interesting take on the Egyptology horror genre. It’s perhaps best described as being about two very different families, one American, one Egyptian. We spend most of the film with the American family, the Cannons, who are living in Cairo, and whose life is thrown into chaos when their daughter […]
Continue reading “The Mummy (2026)”
Michael is a lively, if incredibly constricted look at Michael Jackson’s life. It offers a swiss-cheese rendering of his personal life in between electric reenactments of him recording and performing. Thankfully, the latter makes up for the former, and the movie is entertaining in a “hall of fame highlight reel” way. Mildly recommended.
Continue reading “Michael (2026)”
Father Mother Sister Brother belongs to a sizeable subsection of Jim Jarmusch’s oeuvre: works that exist somewhere between feature-length films and compilations of short films. It consists of three roughly forty-minute vignettes, each of which traces the late stage in a family dynamic where there’s not much more to say, or that can be said. […]
Continue reading “Father Mother Sister Brother”
Bob: “I need the rendezvous point, you understand what I’m saying? I need it.”Comrade Josh: “I understand, and the question is “What time is it?”
Continue reading “One Battle After Another”
Project Hail Mary has defied my expectations more than any other blockbuster released in the last year. Based on the novel by Andy Weir, who also brought us The Martian, it revolves around school teacher and biologist Ryland Grace, played by Ryan Gosling who wakes up abord a space vessel suffering from amnesia. The first […]
Continue reading “Project Hail Mary”
In adapting Wuthering Heights, Emerald Fennell has been faced with a bit of a conundrum. On the other hand this is clearly a novel that is enormously significant to her, both personally and artistically. On the other hand, it’s a novel that challenges her taste for extremity and transgression, since it’s already one of the […]
Continue reading “Wuthering Heights”
From stylized dresses to clingy egos, The Devil Wears Prada 2 pours like an expensive bottle of champagne full of delights.
Continue reading “”
The story of pop superstar Michael Jackson — from his extraordinary early days in the Jackson 5 to the visionary artist whose creative ambition fuels a relentless pursuit to become the biggest entertainer in the world.
Continue reading “Michael (2026)”
