Maestro
Similar9 Songs (2004), A Beautiful Mind (2001), A History of Violence (2005), Alex Strangelove (2018), Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), Annie Hall (1977), Apollo 13 (1995), Belle de Jour (1967), Ben-Hur (1959),
Bend It Like Beckham (2002) Billy Elliot (2000),
Boys Don't Cry (1999) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Crash (1996), Desert Hearts (1985), Donnie Brasco (1997), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), East of Eden (1955), Enough (2002), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Gridiron Gang (2006), Manhattan (1979), Match Point (2005), Random Harvest (1942),
Rebecca (1940) Schindler's List (1993), Sissi (1955), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), The Elephant Man (1980), The Pianist (2002), The Science of Sleep (2006), The Straight Story (1999), The Tin Drum (1979), Titanic (1997), True Romance (1993),
Watch afterAmerican Fiction (2023), Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), Leave the World Behind (2023), Napoleon (2023), Poor Things (2023), Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire (2023), Saltburn (2023), Society of the Snow (2023), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), The Killer (2023),
Bradley Cooper pays respectful homage to Leonard Bernstein in this lavish passion project.
The problem inherent to most biopics is one of balance. Err too far on the side of worshipful and you get nonsense like Oliver Stone’s The Doors. Or you could swing in the other direction and you end up with an “oops, all warts” camp disaster like Mommie Dearest. Most linger somewhere in the middle, at a respectful distance, so that they’re ultimately kind of boring, and offer nothing new or particularly insightful about its subject matter.
Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, about the life of legendary composer Leonard Bernstein, isn’t boring. It’s too visually dazzling for that. It does not, however, leave one feeling like they’ve really gotten to know more about Bernstein other than he was a complicated, workaholic genius who struggled with his sexuality, which is all information that could be gleaned from his Wikipedia page. But it sure is lovely spending time in his world for a little while. Continue Reading →
Fair Play
Similar9 Songs (2004), A Real Young Girl (1976), Anatomy of a Murder (1959), Basic Instinct (1992), Belle de Jour (1967),
Bend It Like Beckham (2002) Boys Don't Cry (1999) Cape Fear (1991), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), Contempt (1963), Copying Beethoven (2006), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Italian for Beginners (2000), Little Miss Sunshine (2006), Lost in Translation (2003), Memento (2000), Raging Bull (1980), Secret Window (2004), Shall We Dance? (2004), Talk to Her (2002), The Handmaid's Tale (1990), The Holiday (2006), The Shining (1980), Vertigo (1958), Volver (2006),
Watch afterBarbie (2023) Leave the World Behind (2023), Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023), The Killer (2023),
StudioMRC,
Fair Play is all about the rules of engagement—in business, in bed, in relationships—and the chaos that ensues when someone who lives and dies by those rules suspects his partner is breaking them. However, it isn’t the fairness of the righteous or the just she’s violating. No, it is the unwritten rules he believes everyone should play the game by. Continue Reading →
High-Rise
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn't exist. Continue Reading →
Passing
Watch aftertick tick... BOOM! (2021),
StudioFilm4 Productions,
Rebecca Hall adapts Nella Larsen's novella about Black social mobility (and its corresponding resentments) to haunting effect.
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.)
Nella Larsen's 1929 novella Passing is a fascinating text, a frank but elegant discussion of the intersections of race, class, and gender as cold and delicate as its subject matter. It makes sense, then, that Rebecca Hall's adaptation is similarly airy and ominous, an intimate portrait of resentment and racial/social mobility set amid the stifling backdrop of 1920s New York. Continue Reading →