Bohemian Rhapsody, Bryan Singer’s biopic of Freddie Mercury, is nothing if not a linear recitation of events. The best of Queen’s music approached poetry, but Singer’s film sits comfortably as prose, occasionally the stilted kind. Just look at the first scene after its credit sequence: The young Freddie (Rami Malek), then known by his birth name Farrokh (Bulsara), is one of … [Read more...]
‘The Oath’: Amid screwball plot, a chilling premise
The Oath is like a George A. Romero film without the zombies — at least not the literal zombies. Put another way, it’s 1984 for 2018, a cautionary tale for a totalitarian future that casts a penetrating gaze at our proto-fascist present. Whatever your literary-cinematic reference point, comedian Ike Barinholtz’s directorial debut is easily the most confrontational, … [Read more...]
‘The Guilty’: One man, one room and the voices inside his head
For most of us who have had the misfortune of calling an emergency dispatch line, the voice on the other end will remain a disembodied presence — a blurry connection in the ether of a crisis. The person’s physical appearance and backstory are immaterial, their relationships to the callers fleeting and impersonal. Part of the genius of The Guilty, the debut feature from … [Read more...]
‘First Man’: An epic flight, grounded in gritty character
As a rule, I try not to pay much attention to the snap polling conducted at the end of advance screenings. But the audience’s tepid response to this week’s preview of First Man was too telling to ignore. The universal round of applause did not greet the final credits, and most of the praise offered at egress was muted and lukewarm. “It was too long” seemed to be the … [Read more...]
Updated ‘Star is Born’ speaks with fresh urgency for new century
“It’s the same story told over and over again,” says Sam Elliott’s character toward the end of Bradley Cooper’s A Star is Born. He’s talking about the form of popular music, whose 12 bars inspire endless variations on a shared structure. He could also be talking about A Star is Born itself, Hollywood’s grim, self-critical appraisal of the vagaries of celebrity — first filmed … [Read more...]
‘Fahrenheit 11/9’: No solutions, but deeply entertaining anger
Michael Moore’s voice-over during the prologue to Fahrenheit 11/9 adopts the tone of an enthusiastic parent reading a nation its bedtime story. And why shouldn’t it? It’s Nov. 7, 2016, and history is soon to be made: The future first female president is about to begin Election Day, and by all accounts will cruise to a landslide victory. Pollsters place her chances of … [Read more...]
‘The Wife’: Close brings novelistic depth to story of frustrated ambition
Swedish director Bjorn Runge’s The Wife is set in 1992, a time when people still used corded landlines and smoked cigarettes. When Glenn Close, as the title character, accepts a cigarette from an infatuated younger man, she smokes it romantically, like a classic movie star, which of course she is. Close’s character, Joan Castleman, is not a smoker, but she’s sitting in a hip … [Read more...]
‘Juliet, Naked’ a charmer despite nods to rom-com formula
The comma separating the two words of Juliet, Naked is flush with sensual possibility, but it’s the first joke in this affable, niche-y romantic comedy. The title is more audiophilic than erotic: What’s being stripped down isn’t Juliet the person but Juliet the fictional album by a fictional singer-songwriter named Tucker Crowe. Kind of like the Beatles’ Phil Spector-less Let … [Read more...]
‘The King’ will leave you cryin’ all the time, and not about Elvis
I try to keep President Trump out of film reviews, I really do. But in documentaries, especially the ones that purport to explore the Way We Live Now, 45’s presence is unavoidable. Eugene Jarecki’s The King is ostensibly a doc about the legacy of Elvis Presley, but it’s also an American travelogue circa 2016, and it can’t help but catalog the fissures of the year’s … [Read more...]
‘Eighth Grade’ gets real with the digital generation
If, like me, you have no unearthly idea what’s going through the mind of the average representative of Generation Z at any given time — heck, I don’t even understand millennials, and I am one — then Eighth Grade is sure to provide some answers. This illuminating coming-of-age film is set during the last week of middle school, a three-year purgatory of anonymity and … [Read more...]