Dir. Sam Weisman. Starring Brendan Fraser, Leslie Mann, John Cleese A beautiful young heiress, stuck in an engagement with a man she doesn’t seem to like very much, goes on a trip in which her fiance’s venality comes to the fore as a new suitor slouches in. This new man charms her, even though he’s… Read More George of the Jungle (1997)
Dir. Noah Baumbach. Starring Jason Hamilton, Chris Eigeman, Olivia D’Abo Image links back here The difference between Metropolitan and Kicking and Screaming is about a decade’s worth of perspective. Watching Kicking and Screaming I wished that Whit Stillman had been the one making it rather than Baumbach in the way that people prefer butter to margarine. (The presence of Chris… Read More Kicking and Screaming (1995)
Dir. Greta Gerwig. Starring Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, Timothee Chalamet How many people do you think have said “No spoilers!” and “They’ve made this book into a movie seven times” in the same week? I hesitate to say that “everyone knows” what will happen in Little Women, but like, if you’re going to see Little Women you… Read More Little Women (2019)
Dir. the Safdie Brothers, who I will start to refer to by their Christian names when they get separate Twitter accounts. Starring Adam Sandler, Julia Fox, Kevin Garnett Spoilers because this is still in theaters. I am so tired of leading off with spoilers. I have got to start writing about stuff from the ’40s… Read More Uncut Gems (2019)
Dir. J.J. Abrams. Starring Daisy Ridley, Oscar Isaac, John Boyega There are spoilers, but can you spoil something that was already rotten? Ha! Ha! Ha! This would be a bad movie even if The Last Jedi had never existed, one reliant on lame screenwriting, quests which are urgent but never important, and a centrist distaste for bloodletting.… Read More Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
Last year, my year-end review of the movies I watched still had the sheen of professional list-making on itl: I thought about it as, more or less, the fifty best movies I saw that year which I hadn’t seen before, but allowed for some leeway on that front to talk about the movies which I… Read More 2019 Year-End Review: Forty-Five Moments
Dir. Todd Haynes. Starring Mark Ruffalo, Anne Hathaway, Bill Camp To hear so many others tell it, Dark Waters is a fairly safe drama which happens to be directed by Todd Haynes. A good movie, not a great one, a little dim in comparison to the corona of I’m Not There or Carol. As I… Read More Dark Waters (2019)
Dir. Terrence Malick. Starring August Diehl, Valerie Pachner, Tobias Moretti Spoilers, yes, but I also don’t know that if you know anything about this movie that it could be spoiled. After all the hubbub that led to Abraham Lincoln’s ascension to the presidency—the brokered convention that put Lincoln on the Republican ticket, the broken Democratic… Read More A Hidden Life (2019)
Dir. Scott Z. Burns. Starring Adam Driver, Annette Bening, Maura Tierney Dan Jones (Driver) is determined to see his report come out “the right way.” It’s what he tells a New York Times reporter (Matthew Rhys, for the first time in his career meeting someone in secret without wearing a ridiculous wig) when it looks like… Read More The Report (2019)
Dir. Noah Baumbach. Starring Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Azhy Robertson This came out yesterday, so I guess spoilers, but also if you’re worried about spoilers don’t go on Twitter either. Until the fight, I felt like Marriage Story worked. The fight is not a bad scene, especially if one was waiting for an earthshaking screaming match to… Read More Marriage Story (2019)
Seeing Things Secondhand 