In the annals of movie titling, Juliet, Naked must deserve a special place, since there is no one in it who is named Juliet and no one in it who is naked, though we do get a glimpse of Ethan Hawke’s underpants,…
It isn’t telling you anything you don’t already know to say that hatred and anger are the master emotions in our public life today. Even when the media lavishes love and praise and admiration on somebody, as they have on…
Set in Sacramento in 2002-2003, Greta Gerwig’s female coming-of-age story Lady Bird provides two main points of perspective on the otherwise claustrophobic representation of that city — “the Midwest of California” — which its eponymous heroine (Saoirse Ronan) is so eager…
It’s best to think of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri as a sort of cinematic parable about forgiveness — both of others and of ourselves. But I’m sorry to say that many viewers who hope for a spiritual experience will be put off by…
It is now impossible for us to watch a movie like Darkest Hour, or to contemplate the colossal historic presence of Winston Churchill, without the benefit of hindsight. He was right when almost everyone else was wrong. He led his country through…
The heavy-handedness of the irony in Sean Baker’s new movie, The Florida Project, begins with the opening titles, over which we hear Kool & the Gang singing “Ce-le-brate good times, come on!” while the camera introduces us to the sun-drenched…
Brad Sloan (Ben Stiller), the hero of Mike White’s Brad’s Status, is a prig of the first water, which should be apparent to anyone not already a part, as he is, of the cozy little world of the media, “non-profits”…
Rather as they are by President Trump, conservatives are divided by Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk. To Kyle Smith of National Review the film is “brilliantly realized” and “magnificently well crafted” if a little short on Spielbergian sentiment. Churchill’s great “We shall defend our Island…”…
Others have pointed to the fairy-tale quality of Rama Burshtein’s Hebrew-language movie (with subtitles) The Wedding Plan, but the comparison with folk art can bear a little elaboration, I think. For there is something of the fairy tale, not only in…