“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...]
Season Preview 2018-19: Fall film
The fall brings a better class of films with it, and particularly so this year with a handful of major directors, like Damien Chazelle, Barry Jenkins and Steve McQueen, checking in with their follow-up releases after such acclaimed efforts as La La Land, Moonlight and 12 Years a Slave. And any season that features a newly completed film by the late Orson Welles has to be … [Read more...]