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. 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)
Dir. Martin Scorsese. Starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci Spoilers, I guess. People still care about those, though if you’re on the Internet I don’t know how you wouldn’t know what happens in this movie. There are two good reasons why there are so many newscasts in The Irishman. The first seems purely technical to… Read More The Irishman (2019)
Dir. Ari Aster. Starring Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper Upon being shown the living arrangements for the young people of the Hårga, Mark (Will Poulter) is aghast at how open they are. Everyone sleeps around the perimeter of a single square room. By now we’re at least an hour into the picture, and… Read More Midsommar (2019)
Dir. Robert Eggers. Starring Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe, a very sassy bird As this is still in theaters, here’s a spoiler warning, but also I don’t know that this is a movie someone who cares about spoilers would be into, so… Persona: Ingmar Bergman’s twenty-seventh movie 3 Women: Robert Altman’s fourteenth movie Mulholland Drive:… Read More The Lighthouse (2019)
Dir. Armando Iannucci. Starring Simon Russell Beale, Steve Buscemi, Jeffrey Tambor “I know about the hockey team.” This is the single funniest line in The Death of Stalin, a gravity well which sucks in comedy as easily as it sucks up horror or prestige drama. It is a perfect distillation of what works when the… Read More The Death of Stalin (2017)
Dir. Steven Spielberg. Starring Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Bob Odenkirk The camera moves a whole lot. It’s Steven Spielberg and Janusz Kaminski; one expects that it’s going to move elegantly. For the most part that’s even the case in this movie, I would say, typically able to move us around a newsroom or the offices… Read More The Post (2017)
Dir. Matt Spicer. Starring Aubrey Plaza, O’Shea Jackson, Elizabeth Olsen I don’t know where Matt Spicer went to film school. I don’t even know if Matt Spicer went to film school. (Maybe David Branson Smith did? He also has a screenwriting credit for this picture, and I know as little about him as I do… Read More Ingrid Goes West (2017)
Dir. Josh Cooley. Starring Tom Hanks, Annie Potts, Tony Hale Toy Story 4 is like the reverse ship of Theseus. In the original problem, the physical ship rots away and is replaced piece by piece, and the question is primarily whether the naming of the ship, or the spirit of the ship, is what makes… Read More Toy Story 4 (2019)
Dir. Peter Farrelly. Starring Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali, Linda Cardellini Mahershala Ali won his second Academy Award for playing Don Shirley in this movie, and it’s an extremely endearing performance. He exemplifies “trim” in this picture, from his beautiful clothes to his neat facial hair to his spotless elocution. Watching someone who has every inch… Read More Green Book (2018)
Seeing Things Secondhand 