Damien Chazelle’s interpretation of the Apollo 11 moon landing is a visceral, emotive and carefully executed film, and a drastically different follow up to his Oscar-winning 2016 musical, “La La Land.” Based on strong source material from James R. Hansen, with a poignant score from frequent collaborator Justin Hurwitz and Chazelle’s celestial vision and tight…
Film critic and current director of the New York Film Festival, Kent Jones’ first feature, Diane, offers a psychological portrait of a woman whose attempts to reach out to others hides her own inability to forgive herself for her past misdeeds. A 70-year-old divorced woman living in rural Massachusetts, Diane (Mary Kay Place, “Downsizing”) fills…
“I feel like I am the moon, so bright. But after a while, the brightness is fading away” — Tantra The Persian poet Rumi said, “The nature of reality is this: It is hidden, and it is hidden, and it is hidden” In Bali, Sekala and Niskala refer to the everyday world we see through…
Choosing a third remake of A Star Is Born, a classic rags-to-riches movie that has a history of attracting legendary talent from Fredric March to Judy Garland, as your directorial debut is a risky move, but it’s one that Bradley Cooper pulls off quite well. The actor’s rise from TV sidekick to cool comic relief…
Fueled by over-prescription of highly addictive painkillers, two thirds of all drug overdose deaths reported in 2016 involved opioids. Though the film industry has been late in dramatizing the epidemic, several high profile films have been released this year on the subject including Peter Hedges’ powerful and moving Ben is Back, starring the director’s son,…
“I feel wherever I go, that tomorrow is near, tomorrow is here, and always too soon” — Speak Low, Kurt Weill and Ogden Nash Georg (Franz Rogowski, “Tiger Girl”), a Jewish radio and TV technician fleeing from persecution in Germany en route to Marseilles, waits in a dimly lit café in Paris for a friend…
The term “Cold War,” especially in cinema, usually evokes images of espionage, militarism, geopolitics and stern men speaking tersely in jargon that is only comprehensible to those with a working knowledge of the genre. Pawel Pawlikowski (“The Woman in the Fifth”) defies such expectations with his film Cold War, a starkly beautiful romance that deftly…
