Arts & Culture

Return of the blockbuster

The “Barbieheimer” phenomenon—the dual runaway success of the films Barbie and Oppenheimer—is a tribute to their movie magnificence as well as their lavish production and marketing and their social and cultural traction amid the traumas […]


Arts & Culture

Armchair time and space travel

As I was watching live coverage of the Tour de France in mid-July, something reminded me of the phrase “armchair traveler.” I’ve previously said a thing or two in this space about the streaming of […]


Arts & Culture

Works of women and private eye tales

The Super 8 Years: With her son David Ernaux-Briot as co-director, the Nobel Prize-winning French novelist Annie Ernaux has fashioned an unflinching, remarkably fresh filmed memoir out of her family’s home movies from 1972-1981, the […]


Arts & Culture

Tutti Frutti and a Cannes nominee

France In this Palme d’Or-nominated French production from 2021, offbeat auteur Bruno Dumont constructs a puzzling, ironically attractive portrait of a TV star, a celebrity newscaster named France de Meurs (strikingly played here by French […]


Arts & Culture

Filmspring

Women Talking—A major critic claims that Sarah Polley’s Oscar-winning screenplay “improves” the esteemed Miriam Toews novel on which it is based. Writer-director Polley and her engagingly devoted cast do generate an incisive and moving portrayal […]


Arts & Culture

Oscar season

I’m always interested in learning who and what wins the Oscars, but I probably won’t be watching much of the televised ceremony, again, this year (March 12). That’s a reflection of my indifference toward the […]


Arts & Culture

‘Fundamental cinema’

A few weeks back, I walked out of a Portland movie house feeling I’d just witnessed something truly extraordinary—Jerzy Skolimowski’s EO. This beautifully unhurried account of a donkey’s epic journey through bits and pieces of […]


Arts & Culture

The year on screens

As the world crumbles, and us with it, there may be little consolation in hearing that there was much, maybe too much, to be grateful for in the year’s movies. But consolation—whether large or small—is […]


Arts & Culture

White Lotus, westerns, windmills

I was late getting fully started on The White Lotus (HBO Max), but upon hearing that the start of Season 2 had a reference to Chico State in it, I went directly into that season […]


Arts & Culture

‘If he kills you, I’ll kill him’

Dead for a Dollar is the new western (now streaming on Amazon and Apple TV) from veteran action director Walter Hill (Hard Times, The Driver, Streets of Fire, Southern Comfort, as well as noteworthy westerns […]


Arts & Culture

Earthly delights

A question: The very best movies of the 21st Century, so far, are mostly TV series—The Sopranos, Deadwood, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Top of the Lake, Longmire, Better Call Saul, Bosch, 1883, etc. Yes, no, […]


Arts & Culture

Infinity mirrors

In 1996, French auteur Olivier Assayas made a feature film called Irma Vep with a cat-suited Maggie Cheung starring in the title role. It was a comic drama about the making of a “remake” of […]


Arts & Culture

Midsummer streaming

The Old Man series (FX network, streaming on Hulu) has Jeff Bridges, John Lithgow, Alia Shawkat and Amy Brenneman in a scaldingly convoluted espionage thriller that speaks of, if not to, the Byzantine geopolitical warfare […]


Arts & Culture

Ghosts of the west

It was gratifying, but not entirely surprising, to discover—somewhat belatedly—that 1883, the 10-episode “prequel” to the Yellowstone series, is a richly engaging movie experience. Its 10 one-hour-long episodes follow the travails of a westward-bound wagon […]


Arts & Culture

Lens on history

Over the last couple of months, the film I’ve found most deeply appealing is Navalny, the richly engaging documentary about the high-profile Russian dissident who barely survived an apparent state-sponsored poisoning and, after an extended […]