Though he didn’t invent it, James Mangold so perfected the Hollywood biopic/true story template with Walk the Line that they made a beat-for-beat parody of it in Walk Hard, so he might as well have. In Ford v Ferrari, he aims that factory efficiency at the hyper-masculine sports…
The Irishman tells the probably-not-entirely-true story of Robert DeNiro’s Frank Sheeran, using cutting-edge visual effects technology to place him inside some of the most important events in American history, right next to a lot of famous people, many of whom wind up dead. It’s almost like Martin Scorsese’s…
Universal’s marketing department has been working overtime to sell the new romantic comedy Last Christmas as some sort of spiritual cousin to what is now apparently considered a modern-day holiday classic: Love, Actually. Remember Emma Thompson, who appeared in just one of that film’s myriad storylines? Well, she co-wrote…
It’s nigh-impossible to discuss the new film In My Room, from Berlin School-affiliated writer/director Ulrich Köhler, without revealing that a third of the way in, seemingly all of humanity vanishes overnight, save schlubby protagonist Armin (Hans Löw). Until that jolt, Köhler’s film is a muted, semi-drab character study following…
OK, so things don’t really vanish anymore: even the most limited film release will (most likely, eventually) find its way onto some streaming service or into some DVD bargain bin assuming that those still exist by the time this sentence finishes. In other words, while the title of In Review Online’s new monthly feature devoted…
For the past 55 years, Michael Apted has embarked on a project that is both a landmark documentary film series and the ultimate reality TV program. Since 1964, Apted has followed the lives of a group of 14 representative British citizens from varied backgrounds, starting from the age…
Our third and final dispatch from the 2019 New York Film Festival is offers a smaller pool of takes but checks off one of the year’s biggest players — Josh and Benny Safdie’s Uncut Gems. Also featured here are thoughts on Olivier Assayas’s latest, Wasp Network, the ninth…
Our second dispatch from the 2019 BFI London Film Festival is heavy on likely awards season contenders — Jojo Rabbit, Ford v Ferrari, and The Two Popes — while also offering takes on a trio of international festival regulars this year: Hlynur Pálmason’s A White, White Day, Helina Reijn’s Instinct, and Levin…
Our first dispatch from the 2019 New York Film Festival offers quick takes on a smattering of the festival circuit’s biggest films this year, including: the world premiere of Martin Scorsese’s Netflix-backed, de-aging spectacle, The Irishman; a trio of Cannes Competition entries — The Whistlers, Atlantics, and Oh…
At his best, Arnaud Desplechin is a mad tinkerer, creating weird, expansive narratives that follow dysfunctional people through the vicissitudes of every day life. He’s got a big bag of tricks, infusing typically staid, talky family and romantic melodramas with boundless formal energy and a willingness to follow…
Lifting a page from a varied litany of genre precedents, Jovanka Vuckovic’s Riot Girls envisions a post-apocalyptic world — brought about via virus, not zombies or nuclear war — where adults have died off and only kids remain. In a choice that’s meant to mirror various high school…
On Lost Girls, Natasha Khan sounds more free than she has since she completely lay her trust in the arms of another on “Daniel,” the lead single off her 2009 album Two Suns. Interim Bat for Lashes releases have found Khan growing more wary of opening herself up,…
Our seventh and final dispatch from the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival (here’s our first, our second, our third, our fourth, our fifth, our sixth) is also our largest, offering takes on all of the features (and one long short) present in this year’s Wavelengths program. Here are:…
Our sixth dispatch from the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival (here’s our first, our second, our third, our fourth, our fifth) offers an eclectic mix of takes: Terrence Malick’s return to more pastoral vistas, A Hidden Life; Venice award-winner Atlantis; Ken Loach’s latest social lambast, Sorry We Missed…
With Ana, Mon Amour, director Calin Peter Netzer is desperately trying to align himself with the great figures of doomed romantic cinema, from Rivette and Cassavettes to Bergman and Pialat. That’s certainly a bold aspiration, although given that rarified air it is perhaps unsurprising that he misses the mark.…
Our fourth dispatch from the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival (here’s our first, our second, and our third) skews heavily Canadian: Atom Egoyan’s latest, lurid work, Guest of Honour; Matthew Rankin’s Midnight Madness entry and Guy Maddin riff, The Twentieth Century; Calvin Thomas and Lev Lewis’s White Lie;…
Our third dispatch from the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival (here’s our first, and here’s our second) includes more TIFF world premieres than any of our others so far: Armondo Iannucci’s Dickens adaptation, The Personal Life of David Coppefield; Alice Winocour’s astro not-in-space movie Proxima; the Kevin Phillips-directed…
Depiction of extreme pain is not the most distressing thing about Finnish BDSM comedy Dogs Don’t Wear Pants. Frequent scenes of a dominatrix strangling a bereaved man until he’s near death don’t even register as outré after the first time. No, what’s hardest to swallow about Jukka-Pekka Valkeapää’s third…
Our first dispatch from the 2019 Toronto Film Festival (which runs from Sept. 5 – 15) finds us finally catching up with a lot of titles from this year’s Cannes Film Festival (Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, the Dardennes’ Young Ahmed, and Michael…
If there’s any one quality that defines Cui Jian, it’s that he has never been content to be any one thing. Rock ‘n’ roll didn’t start with Cui — so he had to be a Chinese rock ‘n’ roller, fusing his own national identity and cultural and musical…