Style
Art and Life in Richard Linklater’s “Blue Moon” and “Nouvelle Vague”
Leave it to Richard Linklater to see how, in art, the fundamental things apply. In his two new movies—“Blue Moon,” about the lyricist…
Tag
the current cinema
World
“After the Hunt” Is a Pleasurably Ludicrous House of Cards
In Luca Guadagnino’s film, Julia Roberts plays a Yale professor forced to choose sides when a student accuses a colleague of sexual…
World
“One Battle After Another” Is a Powerhouse of Tenderness and Fury
At a crucial moment in “One Battle After Another,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s electrifying new action thriller, someone cries out, “Who are…
Style
“A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” Is None of Those Things
If movies were given scores as figure skaters are, fantasy would start with a high rating for technical difficulty. The landings of the…
Style
“Eden” Is a Messy Survival Thriller with Nietzschean Appeal
The new movie “Eden” features bursts of foul temper, wild sex, grisly violence, and nihilist ideology—a departure, you might say, for Ron…
World
“Splitsville” Plays Infidelity for Laughs; “A Little Prayer” Shows What’s Really at Stake
In the studiedly rambunctious comedy “Splitsville,” Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin play a pair of homewreckers. The home, a…
World
“Highest 2 Lowest” Marks a Conservative Pivot for Spike Lee
It’s fascinating when filmmakers make drastic late-career shifts, as Martin Scorsese did with “The Wolf of Wall Street” and Francis Ford…
Style
“Weapons,” “Harvest,” and the Shackles of the Horror Genre
Horror is an accursed genre. Because it promises to deliver a specific sensational effect, its stories are obliged to fit into preordained…
World
“Eddington” Is a Lethally Self-Satisfied COVID Satire
“Eddington” is a slog, but a slog with ambitions—and its director and screenwriter, Ari Aster, is savvy enough to cultivate an air of…
World
The Simplistic Moral Lessons of “Superman”
The world may be going to hell, but the writer and director James Gunn has graced it with a sunshine “Superman.” The most recent…
World
“F1” is a Well-Tooled Engine of Entertainment
In “F1,” a snazzy piece of blockbuster engineering, Brad Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a devotee of fast cars, beautiful women, and simple…
Style
“Materialists” Is a Thoughtful Romantic Drama That Doesn’t Quite Add Up
The work of the Korean Canadian filmmaker Celine Song is modest in scope and intimate in feel, but listen closely to her words—to say…
World
Is “The Phoenician Scheme” Wes Anderson’s Most Emotional Film?
Wes Anderson’s new film, “The Phoenician Scheme,” is a funny-ha-ha comedy, but there’s nothing funny about its story, which involves a…
Style
“Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning” Goes Hard on Valediction
“Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning” has a running time of just under three hours. Within those three hours, alas, I’d say that Tom…
World
“Caught by the Tides” Is a Gorgeous Vision of Loss and Renewal
More than two decades in the making, Jia Zhangke’s mostly archival film embodies the sweeping transformations of modern China in its very…
World
The Uneven Cross-Cultural Comedy of “Paddington in Peru” and “Universal Language”
Not every filmmaker is a cinephile, but, among those who are, that passion can manifest itself in unexpected ways. The driving pleasure of…
World
The Ghost’s-Eye View of Steven Soderbergh’s “Presence”
Although Steven Soderbergh started out as an independent filmmaker, he may be Hollywood’s last true believer. He made fine studio movies…
World
Marianne Jean-Baptiste Gives a Performance for the Ages in “Hard Truths”
We first met Hortense Cumberbatch, the soft-spoken optometrist at the heart of Mike Leigh’s wonderful 1996 film, “Secrets & Lies,” at a…
Style
“The Brutalist” ’s Epic Inversion of the American Dream
Not long into “The Brutalist,” the director Brady Corbet plunges us into darkness—a darkness that, although neither formless nor void,…
World
Great Books Don’t Make Great Films, but “Nickel Boys” Is a Glorious Exception
It’s harder to adapt a great book than an average one. Literary greatness often inhibits directors, who end up paying prudent homage to…
World
Looking Back on a Fallen Life in “Oh, Canada”
The resurgence, in the past decade, of Paul Schrader as one of the most accomplished and acclaimed contemporary movie directors is part of…
World
“Wicked” and “Gladiator II” Offer Nostalgic, Half-Satisfying Showdowns
With a musical return to Oz and a bloody epic of ancient Rome, Hollywood studios double down on blockbuster spectacle. Source link