To note that The Truth is Hirokazu Kore-eda’s starriest movie to date is to understate. While the Japanese director’s previous 13 films have been cast with actors unfamiliar to the non-cinephile masses, and often earn little more than festival and art-house exhibition, his latest has all the ingredients for broader appeal and a wide theatrical opening — something it was poised … [Read more...]
‘Non-Fiction’: What we talk (and talk and talk) about
When is there too much of a good thing? This question looms over Olivier Assayas’s exhaustively intelligent Non-Fiction, a zeitgeist-targeted ensemble comedy stuffed with so many statements about the Way We Live Now that we can hardly be expected to process them all. Assayas’ script is like a torrent of Snapchat missives that disappear into the nether, to be replaced by the … [Read more...]
Denis’ ‘High Life’ an arty space id-yssey
At first blush, High Life seems to be about a single father trying to raise an infant child in inhospitable conditions — in this case, outer space. As in the home, objects aboard his rectangular, wood-paneled spacecraft fail, and Monte (Robert Pattinson) must tend to them while monitoring his baby, always on alert in fronts both personal and existential. His daughter’s … [Read more...]
The prime of Ms. Juliette: ‘Let the Sunshine In’ offers an earthy, real heroine
Many of the most award-winning screenplays of both the classical and modern era are also among the archest and most self-conscious. After all, as much as I admire all of them, nobody talks like they do in Aaron Sorkin or Quentin Tarantino or Coen Brothers or Joseph L. Mankiewicz scripts. Their dialogue is flashy, eccentric, aspirational. Rarely is someone struck speechless in … [Read more...]