Most children’s stories, fantasies at least, need magic to work. That is, there’s usually some means by which the everyday, the known, is mixed with or...
When Morgan Neville won the Oscar for his documentary, Fifty Feet From Stardom, I wonder if he knew that his follow-up film was going to be...
Life hurts. Facile films use this truth to extract drama. The worst of them exploit the characters, and in turn, the audience, for effect. One comes...
There’s an old Russian joke: What happens when you put a group of conniving, sycophantic, power-hungry, self-serving, ruthless, frightened, nasty men together in a room?
Let me make something clear from the start. Some movies make you feel glad there are movies, and some movies make you glad you are alive....
Some films stand alone, while others provide bridges. Some films are definitive, while others open up discourse.
Ziad Doueiri’s The Insult, Lebanon’s Best Foreign Film Oscar candidate, is a heartfelt and strident message movie, and how successfully and powerfully that message gets across depends...
Hostiles, Scott Cooper’s new western, wants to be taken seriously. It wants to say important things, address essential themes, and say it all with unflinching intensity...
Martin Scorsese says that each film usually has a single frame that in visual terms defines and encapsulates the film. Think of George Bailey, in Frank...