Oscars: Right or Wrong?

2000 Winner Gladiator Gladiator is a fine movie, heavy emphasis on fine. There were better choices. What should have won? Traffic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Erin Brokovich are also worthy winners, but Traffic is a masterclass in crosscutting narrative excellence, boasting terrific performances and a prime script. What should have been nominated? In the...

“Blonde” is a surreal, bizarre, nightmare of a film

Marilyn Monroe did not lead an easy life. That is a pretty definite statement. Behind all the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, Monroe was known to have suffered from depression, lost multiple pregnancies and never achieved a truly happy marriage. And according to novelist Joyce Carol Oates and screenwriter/director Andrew Dominik, Monroe was also a...

“All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” finds art even in the darkest of circumstances

Great artists are able to look at life in ways no one else can. And sometimes, the more distressing the life, the more impactful the art. Nan Goldin certainly hasn't had the easiest life. And her ire leads her to attack some of the biggest villains in history; the Sackler family. Directed by Laura Poitras,...

“Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” is another fun mindbending whodunit from Rian Johnson

The first Knives Out film was innovative in that it twisted its narrative along genre; It went from whodunit to thriller to spy and back around again to whodunit. It was a unique twist on a rather predictable narrative. Glass Onion again finds writer-director Rian Johnson bending the genre but given that this is the...

“Women Talking” features a lot of women talking, which is fine, but not much else

You don't need to be an action movie to have exciting action. Talky motion pictures like Spotlight, 12 Angry Men and even My Dinner with Andre are plenty exciting. They use quippy dialogue, confrontational exchanges, interesting camera angles and escalating themes to build resonance and interest. Women Talking is just not exciting. Written and directed...

“Fire of Love” will melt your heart

Katia and Maurice Krafft had a hot love story. It was practically eruptive. Their burning desire was palpable. They lava'd each other. Okay, I'm done. And I'm sorry. Directed by Sara Dosa, Fire of Love is a documentary that follows Katia and Maurice, two volcanologists who meet while students at the University of Strasbourg, fall...

“Triangle of Sadness” feels mostly like wasted potential

"Tax the rich." "Let them eat cake." Along with a heightened sense of race consciousness, films have recently tackled the ever-widening wage gap, the uber-wealthy given their due desserts of deserved mockery. While Triangle of Sadness has a number of strong moments and terrific mise en scene, the uneven plot drags down an otherwise strong...

An experimental nature odyssey, “Eo” is so close to being sublime

Not all movies about animals have to be Bambi. You know what I mean: the naive, innocent animal faces a harsh world and loses innocence and in turn reveals humanity's own callous and ungrateful persona. In that vein, EO is so close to elevating the animal film, its experimental and non-narrative structure leading to an...

Filmed in secret, “No Bears” is a harrowing blur between fiction and reality

A film shot in secret in Iran by a now jailed dissident is loaded with political intrigue. Jafar Panahi's No Bears, his ninth feature, features a fictionalized version of himself navigating the treacherous social landscape of the country that labels him a dissident. It's a riveting, terrifying portrait of a totalitarian reality. Panahi is remotely...

“The Blackening” is a breezy comedy that lacks cleverness

Get Out opened the door to a whole genre of race-conscious films, stories that deliberately poked fun at the Black-person-gets-killed-first trope and revealed the latent prejudice in movies and society in general. Some of the films were ingenious (a Candyman remake/sequel, Sorry to Bother You); others forgettable (Antebellum, Ma). The Blackening falls decidedly in the...