Reviews

This is a story about a young woman who grows up in a tightly-knit, restrictive religious community who ultimately has to choose between sticking with her faith and family, versus breaking away and becoming her true self. It's an old story (although more often told about a young man). But the telling here is heartfelt, sympathetic and often surprising. Eliza Scanlen is outstanding as the protagonist Jem Starling--she reminds me of a young Sissy Spacek.

Christian conservatives are likely to dislike this film, and I can see that some of them are giving it extremely low ratings to dampen its appeal. While I can't speak from their point of view, I didn't feel that this film mocked religion. This is not the kind of on-the-nose, cartoon satire of religion often offered by Hollywood.

There is a scene in the middle of this film that I think summarizes what Kieslowski is trying to say. The French Veronique is woken up by a blaze of focused light that dances like a will-of-the-wisp. She goes to the window to investigate and sees that the light is just a prank, created by a boy in the apartment across the street using a mirror to reflect and redirect the sunlight. When the boy realizes that he has been spotted, he retreats from his window. All an illusion, it seems--a cheap magic trick.

Except when Veronique goes back to her room, she still sees a will-of-the-wisp, and it directs her attention to a folio of music that causes her to retrieve a shoelace that she had previously thrown away after receiving it mysteriously in the mail, which in turn is a connection to her doppelganger, the Polish Weronika. The film once again shows the apartment across the street. There is no boy, no mirror. This time, there is no magic trick--just a real mystery.

This movie is about the strange connection between two women living in different countries who share many things in common and seemingly can sense each others' presence or absence even though they never meet. There is a love story involving Veronique and a puppeteer who is writing a children's story that parallels the Double Life of Veronique, and it is suggested that some of the odd coincidences that happen in the movie may be stage managed by the puppeteer. Some--but not all.

We can see the puppeteer as a stand-in for Kieslowski himself--someone who creates illusions and enchantments that can surprise and move people but that are ultimately artificial. But the fact that we can be manipulated into being enchanted should not make us cynical--it should not blind us to the fact that there are real mysteries in life, chances and coincidences and harmonies that follow no logic that we can understand,.

Wes Anderson has made a movie about a TV production of a play, and the shifting layers of reality and artifice can sometimes be disorienting. In that sense this movie reminds me of Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche New York, which was a movie about a man who makes his life into a play. But Kaufman's movie used symbolism, music and surrealism to convey feelings of grief, loss and regret that stick with the viewer long after the film is done. This movie, by contrast, uses its meta-structure to double down on Anderson's predeliction for emotional distance and irony.

There are plot threads that could have led to genuine pathos--a family dealing with loss, young love--but they are lost in a maze of red herring plot twists and a blizzard of cameo appearances by beloved character actors. I would have traded in a dozen or more characters to give more screen time and character development to the three young witches-in-training who steal every scene that they are in.

The movie is beautiful to look at--the period costumes are especially well-done--and there are a couple of genuine laughs. Still, in the end the film doesn't make you care about the characters and seems to be trying to hard to explain its meaning rather than having the meaning grow organically out of the story.

This is not a conventional biopic--it barely mentions some of Bernstein's greatest triumphs (West Side Story, for instance) pr greatest setbacks (the "Radical Chic" episode in the 1970s is mercifully left out). It is instead a biography of his marriage to Felicia Montealegre, a woman that Bernstein loved but could not remain faithful to because of his sexuality.

The contradiction of Bernstein's genuine love for more than one person is reflected in his musical life--he could never be only a conductor or only a classical composer or only a theater composer--he contained too much to be pinned down by convention.

The greatest strenghts of the movie are the magnificent score (including a lot of Bernstein's lesser known but still wonderful music), and the outstanding performances of Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan. Cooper in particular invested a lot of time learning how to conduct. And his performance leaves you feeling that you are watching Leonard Bernstein, not watching an actor play Leonard Bernstein.

This is a powerful, affecting story about how the traditional Irish culture of emotional reserve, secrecy and silence leads to a crushing sense of shame and alienation.

It is told from the point of view of a nine-year old girl, Cait, who as the film begins is drowning in cruelty at school and coldness at home. She copes by staying quiet and hiding as much as possible. The main plot follows Cait as she is sent away for the summer to stay with relatives who in their quiet way try to offer more love.

Interestingly, the film focuses initially on the fact that Cait is a bed-wetter. This may seem like a curious choice but it turns out to be an effective way of introducing the film's main themes. Her parents never discuss the problem, offer reassurance or try to find solutions. Cait is left to deal with the shame on her own, while everyone else whispers and rolls their eyes in exasperation behind her back. This is a perfect metaphor for the film's critique of a culture built on a lack of warmth and communication.

This film starts as a social satire of human greed and social disconnection. A new technology allows people to shrink themselves to tiny proportions. Though originally conceived as eco-friendly, the idea only catches on when people realize that downsized people can live a deluxe lifestyle on the cheap. The exposition executes this idea flawlessly and is very funny.

Many negative reviews of this movie have criticized the film's subsequent shift in tone. It is true that the movie becomes more serious, but this is not a weakness--there are fewer laughs but the movie remains thoughtful and interesting, as it confronts whether we should respond to social collapse by trying to escape, or instead by remaining engaged and compassionate towards those who need help right now.

This is one of the greatest movies ever made. It is stunningly beautiful, making perfect use of the changing light, the color red and Irene Jacob's heavenly face. In terms of theme there is a consistent sense of the uncanny--the magical mysterious ways that people find improbable connections and insights, as well as seemingly random fortuitous or tragic events that somehow seem to be directed by a higher power.

The higher power in this movie is embodied in a seemingly omniscient and perhaps all-powerful retired judge, played by Jean-Louis Trintignant. He begins the film as tired, bitter and cynical (reminiscient of the God of Elvis Costello's song "God's Comic"). But during the film he rediscovers humility and a sense of purpose, through his interactions with Valentine, a kind and insightful fashion model and dance student played by Irene Jacob. They are brought together by his dog, who also seems to have uncanny powers.

Like any great movie, this film leaves many questions unanswered to ponder. Is the judge meant to represent God? Or perhaps just a film director? Is Valentine some sort of angel? What is the connection between the old judge and a younger man who seems to be following in his footsteps? What is the meaning of the theater manager who keeps interrupting an important conversation looking for his assistant? And most important to me, what happens to the younger man's dog?

This is a taut, tense story about a group of young adults who want to blow up an oil pipeline to disrupt the fossil fuel industry and thereby fight climate change. Through flashbacks we see how each character came came to join the group, while the main storyline shows how the plot is executed in detail. There are plenty of unexpected plot twists that add drama. The film is unapologetically biased; clearly the intent is for the audience to root for these young people to succeed with their plot and to get away with it. Many people will hate the movie for this reason while others will love it. I predict that this will become a counterculture classic, a fable about sticking it to the man through courageous action against long odds.

This is a sprawling spectacle, the kind of movie that Hollywood rarely makes any more--a three hour run time, several interlinked plot lines, a cast of thousands, an epic story that spans 25 years, and several spectacular set pieces.

It works for the first hour or so. The opening party scene is over-the-top, garish, ridiculous, fun and engrossing. So is the next major set piece, showing the havoc of various silent films being shot simultaneously on a giant outdoor lot, including a war epic with a live orchestra playing "Night on Bald Mountain." By this point I thought that this was shaping up to be my favorite movie of 2022.

But the film loses steam in the second half, and the main reason in my opinion is that the film's central relationship between Margot Robbie and Diego Calva doesn't work. The long scene in the taxicab between Nellie and Manny is painfully devoid of romantic spark or chemisty, and yet we are supposed to believe later on that Manny has loved Nellie all these years? And we are supposed to believe that a savvy, pragmatic film executive like Manny would try to make Nellie into a sophisticated leading lady, when it's obvious that her talent and appeal lies in bawdy comedy? The lack of a plausible relationship between these two characters drags down the whole film.

The 1933 would-be plot against President Franklin Roosevelt is a fascinating footnote to history, and I think it could be the basis of an excellent movie. And given the star-studded cast and the director's track record, I had high hopes for "Amsterdam". So what went wrong?

I think there are two problems. First, the tone of the movie is off. This was a serious attempt by a group of powerful people to overthrow the government and install a dictatorship. The story should have been treated as a political thriller, perhaps told from the perspective of the intelligence agents who investigated it. Instead, most of the movie tries to be an offbeat farce about a group of unlikely friends who stumble into history. Then, in the last half hour, there is a jarring tonal shift towards Making a Serious Point with Contemporary Relevance.

The other problem is the performances. Christian Bale tries very hard to be an eccentric New York Jew, but his effort is obvious and he never seems comfortable in the role, which may be why he comes across as nervous and twitchy, but not actually funny. The only genuine laughs in the movie come courtesy of Chris Rock, in s small role. The other male lead, John David Washington, gives a wooden performance, although to be fair the screenwriters don't give him much to work with--he is a Noble Black Man with no discernable interesting personality traits.

Inarritu's most famous film, Birdman, got a lot of grief from some viewers because of its elements of magical realism, but it was mostly grounded in an engaging, fast-paced backstage story that kept the audience's attention.

Unfortunately, this movie does not have the same energy. There is very little in the way of plot or character development. There are a lot of surreal, dream-like sequences and references to Mexican history that are lost on this gringo. There is some beautiful cinematography and music, but it's not nearly enough to keep me interested for 2.5 hours.

It's telling that the tag-line for this movie on IMBD contains the word "oneiric", which I had to look up in the dictionary. That tells you what audience this movie is aimed at, and it doesn't include me.

What a mess. The initial premise of the movie is promising--a naive country girl with a crush on 60s music and design goes to the big city to study fashion and learns more about the swinging 60s than she wanted to know. But the plot twists are predictable, McKenzie Thomasson's one-note performance is grating, and the horror scenes are so over the top that they inspire more laughter than horror. Pacing is everything for a horror movie--the horror needs to build in a steady crescendo throughout. Instead, starting at the midway point we get a fortissimo blast that never lets up. This film is wearying and predictable. The story has a vaguely "me too" moral and maybe that's why it's highly rated by some, but don't waste your time--this is a bad movie.

This is one of the most moving episodes of any show I have seen on TV. There are funny scenes, especially those involving Lindsay attempting to apologize to everyone for every time she has ever been a brat. But by the end the episode delivers some major plot developments, and more importantly it lands a knockout emotional punch showing an unexpected level of maturity, understanding and depth that belies the supposed shallowness of one the main characters. It's not often that a movie or TV show makes me cry, but this one did the trick. It feels like this should have been the last show of the season.

I like Paul Thomas Anderson's movies, but I admit that their meaning is sometimes hard to follow. Not so here. This is a sweet, warm-hearted coming of age story with the twist that the spunky, energetic precocious youngster is male and the jaded older person who is eventually won over is female. There are a number of hilarious cameo appearances by big stars like Sean Penn and Bradley Cooper as well as some underappreciated veteran character actors like John Michael HIggins and Harriet Sansom Harris. The early 70s period detail goes beyond the soundtrack and costuming to involve funny plot diversions involving the energy crisis, waterbeds and pinball. Overall, this movie is easy to like, funny and poignant.

Johnny is a radio producer (probably for NPR) who is doing a project interviewing kids about what they think about the future. He unexpectedly is called on to take care of his nephew Jesse while his sister has to tend to a family emergency. From then on, the film becomes a road movie in which Johnny and Jesse learn to bond with each other. Not much happens in the story, and the dialogue is heavy with pop psychology and the belief in the profound wisdom of children. The cinematography is beautiful and the performances are strong, but I was bored throughout and wanted it to end.

The movie is a great spectacle of color, music and dance. Director John Chu deserves credit for introducing so many talented but less-known actors in key roles, including Anthony Ramos (Usnavi) and Melissa Barrera (Vanessa).

The movie screenplay makes some important changes to the Broadway original. Most welcome is the decision to give Vanessa's character more depth and prominence, devoting more time to her aspirations as a fashion design. This decision gives the film a better balance between female and male perspectives than the original in my opinion.

Some of the changes are more questionable. The original's suggestion of a romantic relationship between Sonny and Pete is erased, literally relegating gay experience to the background dancers. Also troubling is the erasing of Kevin's racist attitudes towards Benny, who is Black rather than Latino. Together with the added references to White microaggressions, the effect (I think intentional) is to promote the fashionable myth that only White people can be racist.

The movie doesn't answer the most puzzling question from the original: why doesn't Nina just go to Columbia or NYU instead of Stanford? Who says you have to go across the country to make your mark in the world, even if it means leaving the place and the people you love behind?