The only fantasies Fifty Shades Freed convincingly fulfills are those of boutique publishers who would like to believe that a debut novel can acquire 250,000 preorders and that a local glossy can employ upwards of 50 full-time staffers, both of which occur in this film
It’s a sad day when the cinematographer carries the full burden of storytelling, but in this instance it’s also at least a wonderful opportunity to marvel at Laustsen’s work
Some of them gave me hope for America, others invited me into foreign-to-me cultures and one even made me delightfully nauseous
Guadagnino adeptly captures not just physicality of a burning love but also the emotional and intellectual components, and the film is all the more salient for that careful, realistic interpretation
Hugh Jackman is charming as ever, and two dance scenes are mildly inventive and well-executed, yet Jackman’s goodwill and a splash of inspired choreography are not enough to earn the “greatest” in the title
The Post tells the story of the late Katherine Graham (Meryl Streep), the longtime publisher of The Washington Post, who took over its operations after her husband committed suicide in the 1970s
Chastain seems at times to be both the lead and her own supporting actor in this story, as she oscillates between traditionally feminine and masculine modes of behavior
Those expecting camp or catfights won’t find them in Gillespie’s movie, which instead offers thoughtful and somewhat objective critiques …
My Friend Dahmer, from a graphic memoir of the same name by the pseudonymous Derf Backderf, is a kind of coming-of-age tale that dissects a troubled kid’s descent into murder. Backderf was a high-school pal of the boy who would grow up to become the serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey…
… In Three Billboards, where livid, grieving mother Mildred (Frances McDormand) taunts the local police for not solving her daughter’s rape and murder (by being burned to death) from nine months prior, McDonagh has taken on a situation that demands we take it seriously.
Despite the bright cinematography, there’s something quaint and comforting about this film and its brand of old-fashioned storytelling …
One year, back in the early 1990s, an uncle of mine didn’t show up to our family Christmas. I was only 10 and didn’t understand his sudden departure and why nobody would speak of it. A year later, I was at his funeral. He was a playwright and actor in…
Why is Mel Gibson in the holiday family comedy Daddy’s Home 2? When Gibson’s relentlessly bloody, morally incoherent 2016 film Hacksaw Ridge inexplicably became a critical darling, I watched in horror at the love and attention lavished on the director. In what world were we living where, when Gibson’s name…
This fall, mainstream films are subverting expectations all over the place. Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! proved too much for some audiences looking for a moody drama who were then shocked by gory, allegorical narrative. Blade Runner 2049 sloughed off most of its predecessor’s lower-brow populist action for a somber tone and…
Jane arrives in theaters on October 20 On Sept. 11, 2001, renowned primatologist and environmental advocate Jane Goodall was in New York on business. She had planned to catch a flight out to visit a high school to give a talk on how we can find a reason to hope…
When I first saw Brett Morgen’s 2002 documentary The Kid Stays in the Picture, I was shocked that the film somehow matched the rollicking, mercurial energy of its subject, producer Robert Evans. Morgen reimagined the use of archival footage and voiceover, and the style he pioneered has now been mimicked…
Sean Baker’s The Florida Project, the follow-up to the breakout indie comic drama Tangerine, sparkles with joy and hope even as it tells a not-so-hopeful story. In the film, little Moonee (Brooklynn Prince) and her mother Halley (Bria Vinaite) reside in Kissimmee, Fla., in a rundown motel that’s as colorful as…
Filmmaking is not a poor man’s game. Even as digital cameras get cheaper, making a film worthy of release still requires dough to get off the ground, which means the folks who tell stories through cinema tend to come from backgrounds of privilege. That breeds movies aimed at middle- to…
Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold premieres Oct. 27 on Netflix Joan Didion has set an impossible standard for any documentarian who would want to cover her life. She’s essentially already done it herself, brilliantly, in her essays, novels and films. Still, Didion’s nephew, actor/director Griffin Dunne, takes a…
Fifty years ago, in 1967, Cool Hand Luke, The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, In the Heat of the Night and The Dirty Dozen rocked American cinemas. And somewhere in a field outside Pittsburgh, George Romero and John Russo were shooting on black-and-white 16mm film a low-budget movie that would found…
Writer/director Angela Robinson’s Professor Marston and the Wonder Women is achingly normal, in a good way. Robinson has proven herself capable of melding her sincere and often endearingly campy sensibilities to any cinematic style — spy spoofs (D.E.B.S.), Disney family flicks (Herbie: Fully Loaded), comic-dramas (The L Word), sexy vampire…
Let me set the record straight: Dolores Huerta created the rally cry “Si se puede,” otherwise known as “Yes we can.” If you’ve only ever seen the 2014 film Cesar Chavez — about the legendary farmworkers union president — or watched a Barack Obama campaign speech, you may have thought…
