Events on the same-sex rights front have moved so quickly that FREEHELD, which is based on a true story from 2007, and has been in development almost since it occurred, now feels like something of a history story. Not completely, of course–as the current situation of the Kentucky clerk who won’t issue marriage licenses […]
DARKEST HOUR (Focus/Universal – Nov. 22): A shameless piece of rabble-rousing Hollywood biography, directed by Joe Wright and written by Anthony McCarten, and served hot on a platter to Oscar voters. The subject is Winston Churchill (Gary Oldman), and the terrain is the first few weeks of his tenure as Prime Minister, doubted by […]
BLINDED BY THE LIGHT (New Line/Warners): Sundance was somewhat awash in feel-good movies this year, which is unusual but not unprecedented. One of the most successful in previous years was 2002’s Bend It Like Beckham, directed by Gurinder Chadha. Chadha returned to the festival this year after some time in the movie wilderness (Bride […]
PASSING: The actress Rebecca Hall has taken a big swing in her writing/directing debut. Her film Passing, based on the 1929 novel by Nella Larsen, embraces ambitious, difficult themes with sensitivity and expertise. The story concerns Irene (Tessa Thompson) and Clare (Ruth Negga), one-time teen friends who run into each other after several years […]
THE INSPECTION (A24 – November 14): Back in 1983, Robert Altman directed the film version of David Rabe’s play Streamers, about a Vietnam-era boot camp that turned even more violent and vicious with the catalyst of one recruit’s closeted homosexuality. Elegance Bratton’s The Inspection tells a similar story for the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” […]
AMERICAN FICTION (Orion/MGM/Amazon – Nov. 17): The Toronto People’s Choice Award has been something of a golden ticket to a Best Picture nomination over the years, and this year the prize went to Cord Jefferson’s directing debut American Fiction. Jefferson’s script (based on the novel “Erasure” by Percival Everett) for the most part deftly toes […]
> It’s anyone’s guess why Francis Ford Coppola, at the age of 72, with some enduring cinema classics to his name, would decide to make a movie that’s a cross between a David Lynch retread, an old horror cheapie, and a hallucination. What matters is that the resulting TWIXT is utterly dreadful, the worst film […]
> Josh Radnor’s writing/directing debut happythankyoumoreplease, which played Sundance a couple of years ago, was a promising, entertaining NY-set romantic comedy-drama that hailed from the Woody Allen division of indie film. His second film LIBERAL ARTS, which premiered last night at the festival, still sips from the fount of Woody (in this case, particularly from […]