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All Hail ‘The Hunger Games’
Overall, I like “In a World,” actress Lake Bell’s comedy that indicts sexism in the voice-over industry, but it contains one problematic scene. In it, a studio bigwig played by women’s rights activist...
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Nothing Rosy About ‘The Lady in the Van’
Set in mid-century London, “The Lady in the Van” douses us with sweeping orchestration – all tooting clarinets that sound twee as only clarinets can sound. But while “twee” could have been the...
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Powerfully Useful: ‘The Big Short’
If you had told me a year ago that the most powerfully useful American film of 2015 would be brought to us by the man who helmed “Talladega Nights,” I would have told you to fix your damn time...
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The Crap Factory of ‘Sisters’
Call me the Grinch Who Stole “Sisters,” but the new comedy starring the dream team of Amy Poehler and Tina Fey is just plain crap. I know some of you will see it anyway, and I kind of hope you do. A...
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The Ragged Glory of ‘Chi-Raq’
Nobody crafts an opening credits sequence like Shelton “Spike” Lee. In “She’s Gotta Have It,” photo stills of old-school Brooklyn are accompanied by his father, the legendary jazz composer Bill Lee....
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‘45 Years’: Rampling’s Many Looks
“45 Years” opens with a sixty-something woman walking briskly along an English country path. It is a grayish morning but not an unappealing one, and she is humming “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” as she...
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On ‘Anomalisa’ and Meta-Narcissism
“Anomalisa” may be the most meta-narcissistic movie ever written by Charlie Kaufman, which is saying a lot given that he also wrote “Adaptation,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” and...
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The Neo-Lolita Horror of ‘Lamb’
Oona Laurence is a remarkable actor. Barely a tween (and a small tween at that), she is technically a child actor. But because she’s hampered by none of the people-pleasing tics that doom most kid...
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‘Mozart in the Jungle’: More Than an Etude?
The second season of “Mozart in the Jungle,” the series adapted from classical oboist Blair Tindall’s 2005 memoir, was launched by Amazon Prime right before New Year’s Eve. I hesitate to use the word...
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The Unacceptable Agitprop of ’13 Hours’
These days, Michael Bay is best known for his seemingly endless stream of “Transformer” movies but he’s also this country’s most unabashedly pro-military director; since “Pearl Harbor” (2001), he has...
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The Solidarity of Sin: ‘Barney Thomson’
“Barney Thomson,” a Glasgow-set ensemble crime comedy rocking so many strong brogues that it’s best watched with subtitles, may be the most Scottish film to wash up on American shores since...
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A One-Note Shame: ‘I Saw the Light’
“I Saw the Light,” the new biopic about Hank Williams, begins with three disjointed moments. A snippet of a faux-archival interview with the country western singer’s publisher, Fred Rose (Bradley...
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‘The Program’ of Malignant Narcissism
There’s a moment in “The Program,” Stephen Frears’s new biopic about Lance Armstrong’s rise and fall, in which the cycling champion, then at the top of his career, muses about who will play him in an...
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Social Music, Jazz Music: ‘Miles Ahead’
Thelonious Monk once said, “Talking about jazz is like dancing about architecture.” Having dated a jazz trombonist, I know this to be true, but I hadn’t considered until recently that making a movie...
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Weird Fiction, High Hopes: ‘High-Rise’
J.G. Ballard, whose 1975 British novel High-Rise has been adapted into a film opening this month in the United States, could be described as one of the preeminent twentieth-century writers of “weird...
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Talk About ‘The Meddler’
One of my favorite freelance gigs is giving talks to local cinema clubs. The groups mostly are comprised of people over 60, which is my preferred demographic of human beings. As Louis CK once said,...
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‘Love & Friendship’& Fangs
Whit Stillman is not exactly a literary adaptation sort. From “Metropolitan,” his 1990 directorial debut, he has worked from arch screenplays of his own devise – wholly original amalgams of doctoral...
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‘Maggie’s Plan’ Does Not Go Astray
“Maggie’s Plan” is that rarest of ensemble films about attractive, overly educated New Yorkers (and that is a cinema genre unto itself): It doesn’t seem like a poor man’s Woody Allen. This may be...
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The Thumb of Tom Tykwer
Tom Tykwer swears he doesn’t “just walk around reading books in hopes of finding new material.” Given the director’s screenwriting chops (“Run Lola Run,” “3”), it seems a legitimate claim, and yet he...
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Not Quite ‘Genius’ (But Not Bad)
Calling your film “Genius” is asking for it, since almost nothing is. But this literary bromance adapted from A. Scott Berg’s book about author Thomas Wolfe and editor Max Perkins is not bad, which is...
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