Festivals are organized fantasy markets, every so often featuring great fantasies and great actors who “play” and sometimes move or even inspire us. The rather humdrum opening of the 75th...Read More

The strongest among the films I caught up with were mostly those about the great disconnect, as if there’s just some information missing in what’s going down between characters onscreen....Read More

The life span of a film is comparatively short—6 months if it’s a star performer, six weeks if it’s got some backing, down to 6 days or 6 minutes if...Read More

In a year that promised to be chock full of eagerly anticipated film titles held over from 2020 – In the Heights, West Side Story, The French Dispatch — the air went out of...Read More

In some respects, Titane, or Titanium, is why I go to film festivals. Or one of the reasons. This second film by French film director Julia Ducournau (Raw) is an encounter I’d...Read More

Arnaud Desplechin’s Deception, which showed in the new, non-competitive Cannes Premieres section, is everything you wanted to know about Philip Roth and more. Way more. At least more than I wanted...Read More

Red Rocket stays right inside Sean Baker’s wheelhouse — the sex industry workers, professional, amateur, haphazard, casual or casualties that inhabited Starlet, Tangerine and The Florida Project before. There’s just no victory or dignity in the...Read More

Over at the high end of the marketing continuum is Mothering Sunday. The story is set post World War I.  In service to the Nivens, (Olivia Colman and Colin Firth), is...Read More