It isn’t often that one needs to invoke Intolerance to describe a current film, but CLOUD ATLAS demands it. Like D.W. Griffith’s epic, it intercuts between stories taking place across hundreds of years of human experience–in this case, from the 19th to the 23rd centuries–in order to tell a larger, inspirational story about destiny and freedom. Although […]
IN THE EARTH (Neon): After his foray into more commercial cinema with the Netflix remake of Rebecca that didn’t go very well, Ben Wheatley has returned to the stranger and more experimental style of his earlier films like Kill List and High Rise with In the Earth. It’s not an easy movie to describe […]
THE DISCOVERY (Netflix): Charlie McDowell’s first film was the ingenious metaphysical farce The One I Love, so there was plenty of reason to eagerly anticipate his follow-up. He (and, once again, co-writer Justin Lader) return to some of the same philosophical territory again with The Discovery, but with less pleasing results. The main action […]
> In just her second feature film as a director (her first was 2006’s Oscar-nominated Away From Her), Sarah Polley demonstrates that she’s already a filmmaker with rare grace and sensuality in TAKE THIS WALTZ, which premiered tonight at the Toronto Film Festival. Blessed with yet another superb lead performance by Michelle Williams, Polley’s film […]
The writer/producer/director John Wells made his reputation as the showrunner of ER, and he’s known as one of the most consistent, professional producers in the network business, with impeccable shows like The West Wing and Third Watch to his credit. In recent years, though, he’s been spending a lot of his time in the more rambunctious world […]
THE HUMANS (A24/Showtime – Nov. 24): There are typically two strategies for adapting a celebrated play about a small number of people in a limited space to the screen. One is to “open it up,” adding scenes, characters, or at least locations outside the original set. The other is to lean into the claustrophobia, […]
Natalie Portman certainly hasn’t made it easy for herself with her debut as a writer/director, A TALE OF LOVE AND DARKNESS. The film, which premiered at Cannes (but tellingly, doesn’t yet have a US distributor) before its first North American screening at the Toronto Film Festival tonight, is a period piece shot almost entirely […]
KODACHROME (no distrib): AKA that page of the indie movie playbook marked “Dysfunctional Family Road Trip To Redemption.” Jonathan Tropper (This Is Where I Leave You) wrote the script, and it has his novels’ mix of damaged-man soap and rom-com. This one features a dying dad (Ed Harris), who has the kind of incurable […]