Articles written by the author
'The Kingmaker' Review: The Power and Vainglory of Imelda Marcos
It was always a little too easy to laugh at Imelda Marcos. The gold and the kitsch, the fine art and the tchotchkes, the rows of bedazzled shoes and the towering dome of shellacked hair — it was all so very much, so very vulgar, so very, very expensive. During the roughly two decades that Marcos was the first lady of the Philippines, she became famous for lavish habits that make the Kardashians seem like skinflints. Even after the Marcos family fled the Philippines in 1986, her extravagance o...
'Long Shot': Beating the Odds for Love and Bliss
“Long Shot” isn’t going to save the romantic comedy, but it’s an adrenaline shot of pure pleasure to the genre’s failing heart. The outline is familiar: Two people meet, retreat and then circle each other, all while talking and talking. The romantic comedy turns on people who fit together — in bed, on the dance floor — but also talk to each other, exchanging words that stop flowing and faltering only with a culminating kiss and teasing fade-out. The difference here is that unlike a lot of rom...Running to Win Hearts and Minds and Votes
(Critic’s Pick)He's Dancing Around the Subject
“The Raft of the Medusa” is a large, foreboding painting filled with drama and writhing male bodies. Painted by Théodore Géricault in the early part of the 19th century, it shows a tangle of men crowded on a raft after an accident. Some appear dead, while others signal toward some unseen sight, perhaps salvation, their ropy muscles tense with effort but also with beauty. In “The White Crow,” young Soviet dancer Rudolf Nureyev visits this painting at the Louvre. What does he see — death, life,...Floorboards Creaky? You Need a Priest, Not a Repair Man
The scares are plentiful and sometimes ticklishly funny in “The Curse of La Llorona,” an enjoyably old-fashioned ghost story. It’s the latest installment in a rapidly expanding horror series that started with “The Conjuring” (2013) and now includes the “Annabelle” flicks (about a devil doll) and “The Nun” (a demon nun). The connective tissue among these titles can be very thin; here, the most obvious link is Father Perez (Tony Amendola), who’s on hand again to explain that, why, yes, evil exi...A Complicated Choice of Hero
Actress Tessa Thompson emotionally expands “Little Woods,” turning a small movie into something more than its textured parts. She plays Ollie, short for Oleander, a daughter in mourning for a mother who has recently died. Junk clutters the yard of the modest North Dakota house they shared; inside it’s clean and homey, though scattered with the evidence of a brutal illness. Ollie still sleeps on the floor of her mother’s room, clinging to a past — and a caretaker identity — that threatens to b...'Dogman' Review: In Italy, a Man-Eat-Man World
The worlds that director Matteo Garrone creates on screen sometimes seem as far out and darkly mysterious as an alternate universe. Best known for “Gomorrah,” a blistering story about a people under siege by the Neapolitan mafia, Garrone looks at an Italy that is dramatically at odds with its touristic image, its charming hill towns and bourgeois niceties. In the satirical “Reality” (2013), a fishmonger loses himself in his desperation to become a reality-TV star, an aspiration that Garrone s...'Stockholm': When You Find the Hostage-Taker Captivating
Ethan Hawke is the best thing about “Stockholm,” but the moment he strides into a bank things begin going haywire. With strained comedy, unearned sobriety and Bob Dylan on the soundtrack, the movie revisits the 1973 Swedish robbery that inspired the coinage Stockholm syndrome. That term is often used when hostages — or victims of any kind, including of relationships and of long novels — develop an identification with their captors. Hawke plays Lars, the robbery’s would-be mastermind, who appe...The Agnès Varda I Knew: Showing Women Their Real Place in Movies
Soon after I first met Agnès Varda, I drove her to the Hollywood police station. It was 2009 and we were supposed to be at a dinner for the Los Angeles opening of her documentary “The Beaches of Agnès,” a lyrical ramble through her life. At that point, Varda had been making movies for more than a half century, a milestone that then seemed to me as impossible as her death last month at 90 seems to me now.'High Life' Review: Robert Pattinson Is Lost in Space
Every so often in “High Life,” the latest from French director Claire Denis, there’s a shot of outer space. A cosmic whatsit, the story largely takes place in a black-velvet void with pinpricks of light. Earth is far away, long ago, a memory. Not all that much happens in this immensity, though sometimes a colorful gassy emanation floods the screen and something — a wrench, a body — floats into the great nothing. Inside a spaceship, by contrast, there’s plenty of action: bodily fluids, spasms ...'Shazam!' Review: The Right Word Unlocks an Inner Exuberance
Ever since Christopher Nolan took Batman to their mutually productive dark place, the DC cinematic super-universe has been as somber as a grave. There have been exceptions, shimmers of light amid the doom. Outside the animated realm, though, the stories and mood have been downbeat, matched by hues that range from drab to black amid bilious green, raging purple and watery blue. Even the “S” on Superman’s chest looks drained of cheer, more like dried blood than some candy-colored delight.'Shazam!' Review: A Boy's Supersized Alter Ego in a Sunny Superhero Flick
Ever since Christopher Nolan took Batman to their mutually productive dark place, the DC cinematic super-universe has been as somber as a grave. There have been exceptions, shimmers of light amid the doom. Outside the animated realm, though, the stories and mood have been downbeat, matched by hues that range from drab to black amid bilious green, raging purple and watery blue. Even the “S” on Superman’s chest looks drained of cheer, more like dried blood than some candy-colored delight.'The Mustang' Review: Where the Wild Things Roam. And Sometimes Break Out.
There are two furious beasts in “The Mustang,” one a hulking man in a jumpsuit stamped with the letters DOC, and the other the wild horse of the title. The man is an inmate in a Nevada prison set against desert and mountains, but he hasn’t been able to enjoy the scenery lately, having been condemned to an isolation that is at once literal and figurative. He’s an archetypal solitary man of fiction, one of those troubled souls with clenched fists who must be coaxed, at times thrust, into the wo...'3 Faces' Review: On the Road in Iran (and Off It, Too)
(Critic’s Pick)'Transit' Review: An Existential Puzzler With Jackboots and Terror
(Critic’s Pick)'Fighting With My Family' Review: They Body Slam You, Your Mum and Dad. Lovingly.
(Critic’s Pick)'Lords of Chaos' Review: Where Anomie and Speed Metal Meet Doom
Director Jonas Akerlund works hard to deliver on the title of “Lords of Chaos,” a tale of bad music and terrible deeds. Inspired by a true story, the movie ladles up lots of pulpy bits and buckets of blood to tell a depressing, depressingly familiar story about what happens when young men with apparent means and a whole lot of free time get together to build their own precariously hermetic world. In this case, their clubhouse was the Norwegian black-metal scene of the 1980s and early ‘90s, wh...'The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part' Review: Everything Is Not Awesome. Everything Is an Ad.
The new animated Lego movie is pretty much like the last one. Or maybe I’m thinking of another one, not that it much matters. There are differences between editions, most fairly negligible. The unifying factor, to note the obvious about the state of big-screen children’s entertainment, is that they are all feature-length commercials. The “Transformers” series helped pave the way for Legos by flipping the old idea that movies (like “Star Wars”) were the creative source for the licensed merch, ...The Sundance Film Festival Comes Through (Again!)
(Critic’s Notebook)Review: Revisiting a Film from Ida Lupino, Hollywood Star Turned Director
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