Reviews & News

Harlan Jacobson’s Reviews and Interviews

Reviews & News by Harlan Jacobson

Harlan Jacobson and guest contributors provide film reviews, festival and film industry coverage, along with interviews and which can regularly be heard on WBGO.org.
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And Just Like That… 2024 Goes Straight to Hellions

James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown traces the arrival from the Minnesota Range of 20 year-old Bob Dylan in Morris Plains, NJ to sing “Song to Woody” at Woody Guthrie’s hospital bed, attended by Pete Seeger in 1961—all the way to the infamous day Dylan would’ve...
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July 20, 2021

Harlan Jacobson reports from The Cannes Film Festival 2021: Sean Penn’s Flag Day

Flag Day, directed by Sean Penn, concerns the Family Vogel, late 20th century Minnesotans, played by the Family Penn, Sean as John Vogel, his daughter Dylan as Jennifer Vogel and...
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July 19, 2021

Harlan Jacobson reports from The Cannes Film Festival 2021: Sean Baker’s Red Rocket

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...
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July 18, 2021

Harlan Jacobson reports from The Cannes Film Festival 2021: Eva Husson’s Mothering Sunday

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...
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July 17, 2021

Harlan Jacobson reports from The Cannes Film Festival 2021: Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch

Waiting for The French Dispatch, which held over for a year from the Cannes that wasn’t in 2020, has been talked about in some circles as one of the key cinema...
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July 9, 2021

Harlan Jacobson Reports from The Cannes Film Festival 2021: Todd Haynes’ and Christine Vachon’s The Velvet Underground

The early ‘80s Brown University Semiotics crew of Todd Haynes, writer-director, and Christine Vachon, producer reached back and pulled together a doc that more than simply captures the renegade Velvet...
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July 8, 2021

Harlan Jacobson Reports from The Cannes Film Festival 2021: At the End of the Plague Year

Having missed for the last two years—2019 for my daughter’s graduation, 2020 for the collapse of civilization—the most obvious thing to talk about is not my return but the 74th...
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June 30, 2021

Harlan Jacobson reports from on holiday releases

Film Critic Harlan Jacobson reports on new films you don’t want to miss Read Full Review
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June 26, 2021

Harlan Jacobson reviews The Underground Railroad directed by Barry Jenkins

In four films Barry Jenkins has established himself as a high artist of the Black American experience. Gaining heft and budget from his success with Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk, Jenkins...
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June 26, 2021

Harlan Jacobson Reviews The Tragedy of Macbeth and Oscar Peterson: Black + White

Having just come through the Labor Day turn in the film festival world, which is still picking its way through the pandemic with a mix of in-person and virtual screenings,...
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June 26, 2021

Harlan Jacobson reviews The Father directed by Florian Zeller

We are coming to the end, we hope, of a melancholy season. There are a number of films in theatres and streaming currently which deal with the slow winding down...
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June 26, 2021

Harlan Jacobson Reviews Stephen Spielberg’s West Side Story

Steven Spielberg’s WEST SIDE STORY was calendared to open over a year ago, as was Lin Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights. The two productions had filmed simultaneously all over the metro area, often...
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June 26, 2021

Harlan Jacobson Reviews RESPECT directed by Liesl Tommy

Respect is the latest in the cascade of musical biopics. It follows the distant 1972 Lady Sings the Blues about Billie Holiday, through to the 2004 Ray, about Ray Charles, to  the great Get on Up in 2014, with Chadwick Boseman as the...
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