As intimate as it is lavish, Stanley Kwan’s landmark 1991 biopic Center Stage has finally received the illustrious Blu-ray release it deserves, thanks to the tireless efforts of Film Movement and its specialty Classics imprint ($29.99). Like the screen icon it depicts, this transfer positively glows, shimmering with memory, criticism and the very foundations of cinema … [Read more...]
‘Enfant Terrible’: Biopic of Fassbinder focuses on his evil, not his art
Of the three major postwar German filmmakers — Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders and Rainer Werner Fassbinder — the latter presents the most fecund material for a biopic. A gay man in a time when it was dangerous and transgressive to be one, Fassbinder was also a drug addict, an alcoholic and a workaholic, completing more than 40 films, two television series and 24 plays in less … [Read more...]
In ‘Percy vs. Goliath,’ film finds worthy fighter in Walken
The thing about Christopher Walken is that, like Nicolas Cage and other personality actors who have settled into comfortable self-parody, he always seems to be playing Christopher Walken. This perception is reinforced with every supporting role or cameo appearance in whatever example of disposable studio dross he can fit into his seriously insane working schedule, to the tune … [Read more...]
‘Together Together’: Non-rom-com charms with wokeness, warmth
In Together Together, Ed Helms, much matured since his Hangover bacchanals, plays Matt, a lonely straight man stuck in a middle-age morass. With no romantic prospects but desirous of a family, and as if feeling the tick of his own biological clock, he makes the unusual decision to father a child through a surrogate. That’s where Anna (Patti Harrison), a single woman 20 … [Read more...]
Oscars 2021: Radical reinvention was good thing for awards show
It sounds heretical to say this, because the pandemic has taken such a toll on the film industry this year, but COVID-19 is the best thing to happen to the Academy Awards broadcast. The virus and its social distancing protocols, which previously sank the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild and other awards programs prompted Oscars producer Steven Soderbergh – an Oscar winner … [Read more...]
Hap’s Oscar predictions, 2021 edition: ‘Nomadland’ will take top flick
Following a year of COVID-caused theater closings and postponed blockbusters, the Motion Picture Academy will try to put a positive spin on the industry this Sunday evening when the 93rd annual Oscar winners are announced. Understandably, it will not be the usual ceremony. For starters, the main venue will be Los Angeles’s iconic Union train station – featured in such major … [Read more...]
‘Shiva Baby’: Sexual strength, psychic horror — and it’s a comedy
Imagine a female Benjamin Braddock who, unlike Dustin Hoffman’s rudderless graduate, has no trouble getting laid. That’s one way to introduce Danielle (Rachel Sennott), the neurotic heroine, adrift at the precipice of adulthood, in Emma Seligman’s promising debut Shiva Baby. At the shiva where nearly the entire film unspools in more or less real time — the deceased is a … [Read more...]
Oscars, woke: Nominations feature record diversity
It wasn’t that long ago that the Oscar nominations were a blanket of white — #OscarsSoWhite in 2015 and 2016 — an embarrassment to the Motion Picture Academy and a poor reflection on the increasingly diverse array of quality films produced by Hollywood. Well, what a difference a few years make. When the 2021 Oscar nominations were announced Monday morning — much later than … [Read more...]
‘Bagnold Summer’: Love, maybe, in the afternoon of a life
The premise of the observant British comedy Days of the Bagnold Summer is simple enough. We follow two people, each stuck in a rut, as they muddle through a long summer of disconnection and, if fortune and providence prevail, self-actualization. One of them is Susan Bagnold, played by the extraordinary Monica Dolan. Susan is a librarian who satisfies everyone’s mental … [Read more...]
The View From Home: Pain and pleasure in two historic jazz documentaries
Two documentaries about the Golden Age of jazz, new on video from Kino Lorber and its affiliates, spotlight both the agonies and ecstasies of the lives of its performers. Both are essential, but if you’re going to make a double feature out of them, it’s best to get the tough one out of the way first. James Erskine’s arresting Billie ($13.99 DVD) charts the tragic life of … [Read more...]