Grass is a symbol of renewal in Korean director Hong Sangsoo’s latest film, simply titled Grass, his fourth in the last twelve months. Only 66 minutes in length and shot in black and white by cinematographer Kim Hyungku, the film is set in a quiet Seoul café where the camera intrudes on conversations that begin…
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…
The desire to transcend the environment in which you were raised and choose your own direction in life is central to Disobedience, a clash between religious orthodoxy and the desire for sexual freedom. Adapted from Naomi Alderman’s novel of the same name, it is the first English-language effort for Chilean director Sebastian Lelio whose critically…
“Certain persons in the world exist, not as personalities in themselves, but as spots or specks on the personalities of others” — N. V. Gogol, “Dead Souls” A Gentle Creature is as Russian a creature can ever be. It is the kind of character-driven story where the protagonist is bereft of all possible character —…
Midway through The Vanishing of Sidney Hall, in the midst of a breakdown (breakthrough?), surrounded by his typewriter and empty bottles and strewn about pages, signifiers of talent devolving into madness, the successful yet troubled novelist at its center self-consciously admits to having recently written only “first lines and first pages. No middle. No end.”…
I enjoyed writer/director Alex Ross Perry’s Golden Exits well enough at first. Yet as my chronological distance from the project increases, so too do my annoyances with its gender power dynamics. The film follows six very specific Brooklynites whose lives are vaguely intertwined and then thrown into further disarray when a young, beautiful Australian disrupts…
Does anyone want to play a game? Shake your head if it’s Max (Jason Bateman, “Office Christmas Party”) and Annie (Rachel McAdams, “Doctor Strange”) asking, unless losing is your thing. In a slickly assembled montage, the couple is revealed to be “all day, every day” champions of trivia, scrabble and charades. But they’re only game-night…
