Dir. Ladj Ly. Starring Damien Bonnard, Alexis Manenti, Djebril Zonga The circus is in town, and it is pissed off. The circus van, which had previously meandered around Montfermeil advertising the show, has changed its tune considerably. A slew of profanity seems to both precede and follow the vehicle, all of it in response to… Read More Les Misérables (2019)
Dir. Dan Scanlon. Starring Tom Holland, Chris Pratt, Julia Louis-Dreyfus There are no true standout moments in Onward, no really funny bits, no moments of great pathos, no witticism in a line or line reading that I’ll be able to point to in a year or so when I recall the movie. There are no particularly… Read More Onward (2020)
From worst to best: 5) Brotherhood, dir. Meryam Joobeur One of the great burns on Glee was that time it came out that Santana said Will needed to be in a twelve-step program because he was addicted to vests, and I strongly second that feeling as regards Meryam Joobeur. Many of the worst tendencies in short films are here… Read More 92nd Academy Awards Live Action Short Nominees
Dir. Alexandre Aja. Starring Kaya Scodelario, Barry Pepper, Cso Cso You know what’s great? Crawl is great. There is a dog named Sugar (Cso Cso) who shows up very early in the movie. She gets close-ups and everything, so naturally one feels an immediate closeness to her. Sugar is also such a good name for a dog,… Read More Crawl (2019)
Dir. Lulu Wang. Starring Awkwafina, Zhao Shuzhen, Tzi Ma Dir. Jia Zhangke. Starring Zhao Tao, Liao Fan, Casper Liang There are a bunch of scenes where people eat in The Farewell, which is lowkey one of the hungriest movies in recent memory, but the image that stands out from all this eating is the laziest… Read More The Farewell (2019) and Ash Is Purest White (2018)
Dir. Sam Mendes. Starring George MacKay, Dean-Charles Chapman, Claire Duburcq The Allies won. There, I got the spoilers out of the way. With about forty-five minutes left in the movie, finally something happens that makes you say, “Ah, Deakins did this.” Schofield (MacKay) has just awoken. Where it was afternoon before now it is blue night. He… Read More 1917 (2019)
Dir. Bryan Singer and also unofficially Dexter Fletcher. Staring Rami Malek, Gwilym Lee, Ben Hardy Peter Sellers believed that he would have won an Oscar for Being There if only Hal Ashby hadn’t put outtakes in the credits. It broke the spell, according to Sellers. “Chauncey Gardiner” was on such a different planet that to remind… Read More Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)
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)
Seeing Things Secondhand 