Reviews
The hysterical acrobatics of 1Q84 reek of an author trying to recapture magic, but, having read too many of his own reviews, failing. For those seeking to recapture the Murakami that wowed in the 1990s, Tran’s sensitive, singular adaptation of his small, lovely book isn’t a bad place to go.
Ralph Fiennes’s Coriolanus is the work of an actor obsessed. Fiennes first tackled the part of Shakespeare’s opaque Roman general on stage in 2000—then nursed a decade-long fixation to bring the infrequently staged play to the screen.
Up until now, Mexican director Gerardo Naranjo’s movies have seemed more devoted to energy than content.
Though Robinson never once appears onscreen, he is nevertheless a compelling and well drawn character. Seeing the world through the images that he created induces a feeling of greater intimacy with him than the traditional cinematic set up of relating face to face ever could have.
Rosi’s clearly spent some time pondering documentary strategies and avoids conventional solutions to let his film breathe.
Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s slow, stunning Once Upon a Time in Anatolia begins with a long nocturnal search for “the place.”
The film is superbly written, but it's also smartly directed, insofar as there’s a continuity between its writer-director’s ideas and the visual language he uses to express them.
Most people who pay top-dollar to see Brad Bird’s Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol in IMAX will likely never notice that, as the film sprints along, the size of the image changes with some regularity.
David Fincher has made a career of turning pulp into prestige.
There’s really only one thing you need to know about Albert Nobbs: that it was a long-gestating dream project for Glenn Close.
A claustrophobic bourgeois horror story about two couples of Brooklyn parents who meet over cobbler and coffee after one of their sons strikes the other with a stick, Reza’s play has superficial similarities to previous Polanski films like Rosemary’s Baby, Cul-de-Sac, and Repulsion.
In this follow-up to Marshall’s similar ensemble romcom from 2010, Valentine’s Day, a bedridden Robert De Niro’s dying wish, croaked out of the side of his mouth in the manner of his Flawless stroke victim, is to be allowed onto the roof of his New York City hospital so he can see that precious ball drop one last time.
The Lovely Bones had camp escape hatches in Stanley Tucci’s wormy-squirmy serial killer and Susan Sarandon’s boozy grandma. We Need to Talk About Kevin offers no such exit from its suffocating vortex of self-serious exploitation.
here is a seam of self-deprecation running through British spy films that stretches back to Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes—that of the comparative dullness and vulnerability of Britain when confronted with a fearsome and organized European menace.