I have from time to time mentioned that I have a rule of thumb for evaluating documentaries that I call the “glossy magazine” test: did I get anything from this movie that I wouldn’t have gotten from reading an article in a glossy magazine on the same subject. It’s basically a way of getting at […]
Ramin Bahrani has long since passed into the subset of directors whose best work, I concede, is almost certainly behind them, while my regard for that best work remains so high that I will continue to regard every one of their new films as an event of at least minor importance. And “minor importance” is […]
In fairness to Thunder Force, a high-concept science-fiction comedy vehicle for Melissa McCarthy written and directed by her husband Ben Falcone that was released as a direct-to-streaming exclusive in the first third of 2021: it is better than Superintelligence, a high-concept science-fiction comedy vehicle for McCarthy directed (but not written) by Falcone that was released […]
My favorite piece of narration in Werner Herzog’s tremendous 2005 documentary Grizzly Man goes like this: “[I]n all the faces of all the bears that Treadwell ever filmed, I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature. To me, there is no such thing as a secret world […]
A Week Away, which is basically being advertised as Netflix’s Camp Rock for Gen Z, holds off for about three minutes before the big reveal: It’s a Christian movie. And not just any old Christian movie. It’s a CCM (contemporary Christian music) jukebox musical featuring updated versions of hits from the likes of Amy Grant, […]
Director Edoard Ponti, in making The Life Ahead, a new adaptation of Romain Gary’s 1975 novel La vie devant soi (which has been published in English as both Momo and The Life Before Us), did as many filmmakers have over the years, and cast a family member in a major role. In fact, one might go […]
Pieces of a Woman is the kind of film that gets watched because it received a solitary acting Oscar nomination, and even before it received that nomination, it was discussed for literally only two things, one of which is the performance that received that nomination. Which, for the record, belongs to Vanessa Kirby, one of […]
I do not think it was on purpose, so I do not think it deserves credit, but Yes Day absolutely nails the horrible feeling of being trapped with proud parents who are unreasonably confident that everybody around them must surely love their terrible, terrible children. It is an exhausting, loud sugar rush of a movie. […]
In two entirely unrelated ways, I Care a Lot perfectly showcases two of the foremost aesthetic limitations facing contemporary cinema. The simpler one to talk about is that it’s just really damn gross-looking, with the kind of chintzy digital cinematography that has come to define so many direct-to-streaming films (it has been divvied up between […]
Kirsten Johnson’s 2016 feature-length documentary Cameraperson is one of the great non-fiction films of the last decade, a personal memoir that doubles as an inquiry into the “meaning” produced by the photographic moving image. For a while, it seems like her follow-up, Dick Johnson Is Dead, will end up splashing in similar thematic waters, as […]
There’s no reason for Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga to be good, and since in fact it isn’t good, that works out. But oh, how tantalisingly close to “good” it comes! The latest entry in the moribund “Will Ferrell does a profession poorly but arrogantly, perhaps while adopting a goofy accent” genre […]
There are so god-damned many film and television incarnations of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic misanthropic detective, it would be ludicrous to make a definitive claim about any of them being the best or worst, the most or least faithful, or just about anything else. But I will nudge far enough into this dangerous […]
