“An extraordinary piece of work and one of the most quietly radical in a career spanning six decades. Wiseman wants us to reflect on all the essential roles that public institutions play in our daily lives. It’s the movie’s view that cities have certain responsibilities to their citizens and that this is necessary and noble work, even when it inevitably falls short.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 09/25/2020
My fourth dispatch from the 58th New York Film Festival includes capsule reviews of Sofia Coppola’s On The Rocks, Steve McQueen’s Mangrove, Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland, Tsai Ming-liang’s Days and Mohammad Reza Aslani’s The Chess Game Of The Wind.
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“I thought the whole point of making movies about leggy female assassins in evening gowns was to give us a little eye candy, but Ava can’t even find a single flattering angle on any of the beautiful actresses in this cast. I know not even Luc Besson really knows how to make Luc Besson movies anymore, but at least he can still photograph women.” – North Shore Movies, 09/24/2020
“This isn’t gentrification, but something more insidious that’s the subject of this blood-boiling new documentary by Fredrik Gertten. See, all those shiny, empty silos cluttering up the skylines are investment properties that in a lot of cases can’t be bothered with miniscule matters like tenants. Your rent’s chump change. This is big business.” – North Shore Movies, 09/24/2020
My third dispatch from the 58th New York Film Festival includes capsule reviews of Pedro Almodóvar’s The Human Voice, Matías Piñeiro’s Isabella, Philippe Lacôte’s Night Of The Kings, Béla Tarr’s Damnation and Jia Zhangke’s Xiao Wu.
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My second dispatch from the 58th New York Film Festival includes capsule reviews of Sam Pollard’s MLK/FBI, Song Fang’s The Calming, Nicolás Pereda’s Fauna, John Gianvito’s Her Socialist Smile and Joyce Chopra’s Smooth Talk.
“The one actor who gets it is Robert Pattinson, delivering a gorgeously florid turn as the horndog preacher who corrupts underage Lenora. He plays the town’s new pastor like he’s Nicolas Cage in Peggy Sue Got Married, with an accent from outer space and a preening self-regard that works like a defibrillator on the morose movie surrounding him.” – North Shore Movies, 09/20/2020
My first dispatch from the 58th New York Film Festival includes capsule reviews of Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock, Cristi Puiu’s Malmrkrog, Ephriam Askili’s The Inheritance, David Dufresne’s The Monopoly Of Violence and Ivan Dixon’s The Spook Who Sat By The Door.
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“Scorsese depicts the workaday realities of organized crime with a documentarian’s eye for detail and the sneer of a class clown sent to detention. So irreverent it ends with Sid Vicious’ sarcastic cover of the flatulent Sinatra anthem ‘My Way,’ I’ve never seen a movie with such swagger. When you watch it you feel like you’re getting away with something.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 09/15/2020
“It plays like a very special episode of Sam & Kat in which Sam needs an abortion, and the massive mismatch between tone and content made me think of that scene in Natural Born Killers when Rodney Dangerfield viciously abuses his sitcom family to canned laughter and applause from a studio audience. The whiplash dissonance is obscene.” – North Shore Movies, 09/12/2020
