Film Reviews
NYFF Review: Joaquin Phoenix Gets Avuncular for the Warm, Low-Key C’mon C’mon
This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: Every five years or so, Mike Mills — not the one from R.E.M., though, confusingly, he is a music video director and graphic designer for some of their contemporaries — releases a sensitive, heartfelt drama about delicate but deceptively strong family ties. C’mon C’mon is the 2021 model, starring Joaquin Phoenix as a documentarian who must unexpectedly spend several weeks taking care of his nine-year-old nephew. I’ll Figure It Out: “Nobody knows what they’re doing. You just have to keep doing it.” That’s advice given late in C’mon C’mon by Viv (Gaby Hoffman) to her brother Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix) as he struggles to figure out how to substitute-parent her nine-year-old son Jesse (Woody Norman). Viv has been c...
Halloween Kills… The Franchise, To Be Specific: Review
The Pitch: It’s the late hours of Halloween night 2018, and Laurie Strode’s (Jamie Lee Curtis) house is still aflame from trapping Michael Myers in a flaming prison she’s spent decades building. But even that’s not enough to kill the soulless demon monster with a penchant for homicide; he escapes with nary a scratch on him, save for some scorch marks on his William Shatner mask. As daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) rush an injured Laurie to the hospital, the rest of Haddonfield learns of the asylum bus crash that led to Michael’s escape, and a mob forms to try to catch the killer. But will strength in numbers be enough to vanquish pure evil? Halloween Persists: In the age of “legacyquels,” followups to nostalgic hits from the ’70s and ’80s that...
NYFF Review: Benedict Cumberbatch is a Macho, Petulant Cowboy in The Power of the Dog
This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: Acclaimed writer-director Jane Campion adapts the semi-obscure 1967 novel The Power of the Dog into a feature of the same name. It’s a Western of sorts about Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch), a self-consciously macho cowboy who hassles his more reserved brother George (Jesse Plemons) on the ranch they own and operate together. When George marries the widow Rose Gordon (Kirsten Dunst), Phil turns his cruelty toward her, as well as her teenage son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), in spite of — or is it because of? — some unexpected common ground they share. Not So Old West: The Power of the Dog takes place in rural Montana in 1925, which amounts to a sort of netherworld between Old West imagery and the well-past-d...
A24’s Lamb is Slow-Burn Folk Horror Like Ewe Have Never Seen: Review
The Pitch: Out in the foggy hills of Iceland, Maria (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Gudnason), a couple spending a dignified, quiet existence on their sheep farm, reside far from the rest of civilization. It’s relatively unspoken, but one intuits early that they’re reeling from the recent loss of a child. It still stings, but the two press on in their virtually silent existence, going about their chores and assisting their ewes’ new births. One day, a member of the flock gives birth to a curious creature — an uncanny hybrid of man and lamb — that the pair immediately adopt as their own child. Her name? Ada. But as the three of them build a strangely comforting existence together, their fog-shrouded idyll is disrupted by forces outside their control. The arrival of Ingvar’s dead...
NYFF Review: Todd Haynes Turns Up the Volume for His Engaging Velvet Underground Doc
This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: The Velvet Underground might have been the best American rock band of all time, and Todd Haynes has made a documentary about their relatively short but extremely influential career, which means covering not just core members Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Moe Tucker, but collaborators and contemporaries like Nico, Andy Warhol, and Jonas Mekas. Started Shaking to That Fine, Fine Music: Todd Haynes obviously loves rock and roll, which makes it all the more impressive that he’s spent his career making movies about key figures in its history while avoiding the usual lionizing cliches. Starting with Superstar, his doll-acted Karen Carpenter biopic that’s not commercially available, and continuing wit...
NYFF Review: Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch is a Star-Packed Issue Worth Picking Up
The Pitch: Wes Anderson returns with his first live-action movie since 2014’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, crafting another group of stories within stories (and aspect ratios within aspect ratios). Here, he presents a 1975 issue of The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun, a fictional New Yorker-ish magazine, featuring dramatizations of three major stories: a profile of an imprisoned artist (Benicio del Toro); a chronicle of youthful social revolution, led by Timothée Chalamet; and a combination crime story and food piece narrated by a jack-of-all-trades writer (Jeffrey Wright). That’s just a fraction of the sprawling cast, which includes Anderson mainstays like Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Edward Norton alongside newbies like Chalamet, del Toro, Wright, and Léa S...
NYFF Review: Simon Rex Gets a Surprising A24 Showcase in Sean Baker’s Red Rocket
The Pitch: Mikey Saber (Simon Rex) rolls back into his hometown on a bus, bruised and nearly penniless. His career as an adult film performer has seemingly dried up some time ago, so he shows up at the doorstep of his not-quite-ex-wife Lexi (Bree Elrod), another porn-industry castoff. With few job prospects and no car — he tools around on a one-speed bike — Mikey attempts to rebuild his life. This might sound like a kitchen-sink recovery drama, but Mikey’s interest in self-improvement is questionable and filmmaker Sean Baker’s interest in misery-wallowing is, as ever, minimal. Instead, Red Rocket is a queasily hilarious chronicle of misdirected American hustle. Sunshine States: After exploring the streets of Los Angeles in Tangerine and the outskirts of Orlando in The Florida Project, Bake...
No Time to Die Offers a Thrilling Swan Song to Daniel Craig’s 007: Review
The Pitch: After James Bond (Daniel Craig) left MI6 after the events of Spectre, he attempts to leave his past — and that of his new paramour, Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) — behind him. But the ghosts of SPECTRE and his foster brother-turned- supervillain, Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Christoph Waltz), remain, particularly once a gene-coded supervirus falls into the hands of a secretive villain (Rami Malek) who has his own ax to grind against the criminal organization. Reluctantly, Bond re-enters the world of spycraft and intrigue, now competing with MI6 and the new 007 (Lashana Lynch) to track down the virus and stave off global genocide — and close a few holes in his personal story along the way as well. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service: We’ve long known that No Time to Die would...
NYFF Review: Joel Coen Goes Solo in Style with The Tragedy of Macbeth
This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: The Coen Brothers plus Shakespeare — whaddaya need, a roadmap? Actually, you might; or at least a program note to explain why The Tragedy of Macbeth has only one Coen on hand. It’s not a retro affectation that Joel Coen is taking sole director credit, as he used to on the joint Coen projects (until 2004’s The Ladykillers, Joel took “director” and Ethan handled “producer,” even though they were always really doing both). Ethan is taking a break from making movies, while Joel has mounted a black-and-white version of Shakespeare’s famous (and fleetest?) tragedy, with Denzel Washington as Lord Macbeth, who becomes convinced he must take bloody action to fulfill his destiny and become king of Scotland, and France...
Oasis Knebworth 1996 Is a Warm, Luxurious Bath of ’90s British Nostalgia: Review
The Pitch: In 1996, Oasis was riding high off the success of their second album, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, and an entire generation of British fans were entranced by Noel and Liam Gallagher’s earnest, po-faced lyricism and catchy acoustic tunes. They were big, to be sure, but their decision to host a two-day gig at Knebworth House in Hertfordshire on August 10th and 11th, 1996, was a surprise both to fans and organizers. Knebworth, after all, was the kind of venue that hosted legends like Led Zeppelin and Queen. Even so, the event became one of the biggest concerts in English history, drawing nearly a quarter-million people to Knebworth’s stages between the two days. And, for those die-hard Oasis fans, it would prove to be one of the most pivotal weekends of their lives....
TIFF Review: Last Night in Soho Thrives More as a Tribute to ’60s London Glitz Than Coherent Horror
This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival. The Pitch: Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie), a sheltered young woman with an all-encompassing 1960s obsession, leaves the English countryside home she shares with her grandmother to study fashion in London. When life in the dorms leaves her feeling stressed and isolated, Ellie finds a room of her own to rent in Soho. At first, the move seems ideal: Her landlady, Miss Collins (Diana Rigg, in her final role) is stern but kind. The room appeals to Ellie’s need for space and her aesthetic. And it comes with an exciting bonus: Every night, she’s transported to 1966, where she follows a glamorous young woman named Sandy (Anya Taylor-Joy) as she romps through Swinging London’s nightlife. Alternately watching Sandy...
TIFF Review: Listening to Kenny G Explores What Makes Him So Beloved (And Despised)
This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival. The Pitch: When some people think of Kenny G, they think of the platinum-selling recording artist who’s shaped their childhoods, soothed their workplaces, and even soundtracked the most intimate moments in their lives. But for others, the thought of Kenny G fills them with scorn. He’s a sellout, a fake, a mop-haired purveyor of anodyne saxophone schlock. He disrespects the improvisational, group-centered dynamics of jazz in favor of treacly solo showmanship, and — even worse — subjected the world to “smooth jazz.” The man’s a paradox wrapped in an enigma topped with a curly perm he’s maintained since the 1980s — the best-selling instrumentalist of all time who nonetheless remains a pop-culture punchli...
