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Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024
Review: Writer-Director Pawo Choyning Dorji's "The Monk and the Gun"
"Why are you teaching us to be so rude?" the elderly village woman asks a Bhutanese election official in "The Monk and the Gun." It's a question both poignant and biting, because the "teaching" this woman is resisting is something much of the outside world considers a basic human right: the right...
Monday, Feb. 5, 2024
Review: Wim Wenders' "Perfect Days"
Wim Wenders' "Perfect Days" is set among the crowded skyscrapers of Tokyo and the quiet urban parks that Hirayama (Kôji Yakusho) traverses daily in his job cleaning public toilets. But where the movie resides, really, is Yakusho's face. In this gently sublime film, Hirayama steps outside his humble...
Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2024
Review: Writer-Director Molly Manning Walker's "How to Have Sex"
For women of a certain age who grew up being told that if they wore the wrong thing, drank a little too much, or gave the wrong signals that they were "asking for it," it might seem like the youths of today have it good, or at least quite a bit better. Consent seems to matter. Clothing coverage...
Friday, Jan. 26, 2024
Review: Writer-Director Lila Avilés' "Tótem"
For a film about death, Lila Avilés' "Tótem" is extraordinarily lived in. Avilés' camera roams through the festive, cluttered gathering of an extended family as they prepare for a birthday celebration that evening. Watching it all is the 7-year-old Sol (Naíma Sentíes), whose father, Tonatiuh or "...
Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2024
Review: Ava DuVernay's "Origin"
Words like "important" and "vital" are thrown around possibly a little too much in film criticism. It's not that we don't mean it — it's just that sometimes we (ok, I) can get a bit excited. And when watching and reviewing good films in real time, it's impossible to know what is yet to come. Will...
Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024
Review: "The Kitchen" From Directors Daniel Kaluuya and Kibwe Tavares
The near-future is bleak for the working class of London in "The Kitchen," a well-executed film about a familiar kind of urban dystopian nightmare. It is, ironically, sunnier than the Los Angeles of "Blade Runner," but the mood is as dire. In this world, the have-nots are crammed together in...
Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024
Review: Director David Ayer's "The Beekeeper"
Secret agents and murderous assassins seem to lurk in increasingly mundane places. Remember "The Accountant" with Ben Affleck? Or "The Tax Collector" with Shia LaBeouf? Or more recently, how about "The Bricklayer" with Adam Eckhardt? You probably don't — none of these films were exactly Oscar...
Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2024
Review: Anthony Hopkins Shines in "Freud's Last Session" From Director Matthew Brown
"Freud's Last Session," starring Anthony Hopkins as Sigmund Freud, adds to a string of sterling late-chapter performances by the 86-year-old actor. He was the soul of "Armageddon Time," the reason to see "The Father" and the papal foil to Jonathan Pryce's Pope Francis in "The Two Popes." With the...
Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2024
Review: Writer-Director Michel Franco's "Memory"
Pain and trauma permeate Michel Franco's new drama " Memory, " about two lost souls who find surprising comfort in one another. Both Jessica Chastain's Sylvia and Peter Sarsgaard's Saul are hostage to their own minds, though in vastly different ways. Hers haunts her. His is failing rapidly. And...
Friday, Dec. 29, 2023
Cinematographers & Cameras: Lensing "Origin," "Rustin," "Saltburn" and "American Fiction"
One cinematographer took on a feature which is now generating Oscar buzz, thus continuing what’s been a fruitful collaborative relationship with writer-director Ava DuVernay Another DP embraced a return engagement with director George C. Wolfe, also on a movie that’s considered an Academy Award...