Richard Gere’s Leonard Fife, the unreliable narrator at the core of Paul Schrader’s latest film Oh, Canada (Kino, $23.96 Blu-ray, $15.96 DVD), is seldom without a woman in his life. Yet he shares plenty in common with the brooding loners of the director’s recent de facto trilogy of First Reformed, The Card Counter and Master Gardener: the tendency toward self-flagellation, the … [Read more...]
Misguided direction makes ‘The Dinner’ none too edible
The structure of Oren Moverman’s The Dinner is, appropriately enough, prandial. It begins, roughly, with an aperitif, and concludes shortly after a digestif at an uber-luxurious prix fixe restaurant, the sort of dimly lit culinary castle where a wine is selected for each course, where the waiters explain the provenance of the garnish, and where the bill costs as much as an … [Read more...]
‘Norman’: A hollow man gets an empty character study
Norman Oppenheimer, Richard Gere’s title character in writer-director Joseph Cedar’s new movie, is a walking LinkedIn, if LinkedIn had defective code. Norman lives to connect people. Self-servingly curious, he’s a relentless interrogator of everyone he meets — he’s the mosquito that won’t leave you alone — until his marks end up accepting his card, or a bribe, or a dinner … [Read more...]