Category: art
- What Violence BegetsQueen and Slim a film by Melina Matsoukas. With Daniel Kaluuya, Jodie Turner-Smith, Bokeem Woodbine. Written by Lena Waithe ***** This is a stupendous movie, another absolute must see, by a group of people I hadn’t encountered before (which may be a failing on my part). The acting, directing, and cinematography are all marvelous, but the ...Read more
- Family ReunionThe Irishman a film by Martin Scorsese. With Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Anna Paquin, Ray Romano. ***** Toward the end of The Irishman, the former union boss and mobster Frank Sheeran (Robert DeNiro) is looking through some photos in a nursing home while a nurse takes his blood pressure. He asks her if she knows ...Read more
- TrulyUnbelievable a limited Netflix series by Lisa Cholodenko, Michael Dinner, Susannah Grant. With Kaitlyn Dever, Toni Collette, Merritt Wever. ***** Unbelievable is a series about a serial rapist, a fact which would normally have taken it off my list. I’m interested in crime dramas, like most people, but rape is too hard to take. But Unbelievable ...Read more
- Young Man with a HornA Good Day to Die a novel by Jim Harrison. A Delta Book. 176 pp. $7.95 (in 1973) ** It’s startling to realize that, after a first novel that was the semi-autobiographical and rather random ruminations of a poet who loved the natural world, Jim Harrison, with A Good Day to Die, suddenly became a novelist. ...Read more
- Closing the BookHome a novel by Toni Morrison. Vintage. 145 pp. $14.95 *** God Help the Child a novel by Toni Morrison. Vintage. 178 pp. $14.95 *** Last April, having seen Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, I resolved to read all of her novels, in order of composition. It’s taken a ...Read more
- Hear Hear!There There a novel by Tommy Orange. Vintage. 292 pp. $16.00 ****1/2 This novel is as good as everyone says it is, and that’s saying a lot: it’s been hyped by everyone from Pam Houston (who was apparently Orange’s writing teacher) to President Obama, who has called it one of his favorite books. It is a ...Read more
- Whose House Is It?The Last Black Man in San Francisco a film by Joe Talbot. With Jimmie Fails, Jonathan Majors, Danny Glover, Tichina Arnold. ****1/2 The Last Black Man in San Francisco was for me a study in faces, the deeply expressive faces of not only its lead actors, but also every actor in the film, from the street ...Read more
- Get Out Your HandkerchiefsPavarotti a film by Ron Howard. With Placido Domingo, Zubin Mehta, Jose Carreras, Bono. ***** Pavarotti is an unabashed example of cinematic hagiography, which tells the life story of Luciano Pavarotti through a group of loving admirers. The film mentions a couple of illicit affairs—including the notorious one that led to his divorce and second marriage—and ...Read more
- And Actually IsThe World Could Be Otherwise: Imagination and the Bodhisattva Path by Norman Fisher. Shambhala. 207 pp. $17.95. ****1/2 It’s an odd title for a book on Buddhism, which is supposed to devote itself to the world as it is. When Fischer lectured on the book at the Chapel Hill Zen Center, someone asked him about that, ...Read more
- Aristocrat of ConsciousnessConversations with Jim Harrison Revised and Updated Edited by Robert DeMott. University Press of Mississippi. 289 pp. $25.00 ***** Jim Harrison: The Essential Poems Edited by Joseph Bednarik. Copper Canyon Press. 229 pp. $18.00 ***** Some years ago—probably thirty, at this point—I was sitting with a bunch of book reviewers and editors in New York, celebrating the ...Read more
- But You’ll Wish You CouldThe Dead Don’t Die a film by Jim Jarmusch. With Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Chloe Sevigny, Tilda Swinton, Danny Glover. * Early in The Dead Don’t Die, a UPS man makes a delivery to a gas station and convenience store (except it’s WUPS. Clever, huh?), and the geeky manager asks him for some wisdom for the ...Read more
- Beyond GreatBeloved a novel by Toni Morrison. Vintage. 324 pp. $16.00. ***** I’ve been asking myself lately what literary greatness is, and how it comes about. Does the artist actually see and understand more than the rest of us, or does she just put it into words better? Back in the old days we talked about writers ...Read more
- There’s a Part II?The Souvenir a film by Joanna Hogg. With Honor Swinton Byrne, Tom Burke, Tilda Swinton. ** I realize there’s no accounting for taste, but I like to have some idea in a movie why a woman is attracted to a man, and in the case of The Souvenir I don’t have a clue. He’s somewhat older, ...Read more
- The Golden Age of EditorsStet: An Editor’s Life by Diana Athill. Grove Press. 250 pp. $16.00. **** Stet is a memoir from what I think of as the golden age of publishing. Diana Athill survived—and kept working—until publishing changed, and everything was about finding bestsellers and causing a stir. But she began when it was a gentleman’s business (though ladies ...Read more
- The Tragic Hero of Our Time Is a Wizened Old Man (Played by a Woman)King Lear by William Shakespeare. Directed by Sam Gold. With Glenda Jackson, Jayne Houdyshell, Elizabeth Marvel, Ruth Wilson It’s fascinating the way works of art change through the course of one’s life. When I first read Don Quixote—as a junior in college—it seemed a comic work about a befuddled old man who had fallen in love ...Read more
- Everyday SaintDiane a film by Kent Jones. With Mary Kay Place, Jake Lacy, Estelle Parsons, Andrea Martin **** I’ve seen gritty working class movies before, but never seen a scene quite like one in Diane, where family members and friends are gathered around a small greasy table in a tiny kitchen, and people are drinking soda or ...Read more
- At the End of Her RopeDestroyer a film by Karyn Kusama. With Nicole Kidman, Toby Kebbel, Tatiana Maslany, Sebastian Stan. ***** This was the best movie of 2018. I realize that’s an offbeat opinion, but I’ve seen six of the eight Oscar nominees and none was as riveting as Destroyer. As for performances, Nicole Kidman’s is the best by a man or ...Read more
- Folly and MadnessAsymmetry a novel by Lisa Halliday. Simon and Schuster. 271 pp. $16.00. ***** Asymmetry is a first novel that reads like the work of an old hand. Lisa Halliday has worked as an editor and agent, and an Internet bio mentions the fact that she published one story, in 2005, but it’s hard to believe she ...Read more
- Better Than I ExpectedThe Upside. A film by Neil Burger. With Kevin Hart, Bryan Cranston, Nicole Kidman, Julianna Margulies. **** I went to this movie because I hadn’t been to the movies for a while, I was looking for something not too heavy, and I had seen the trailer any number of times, of Kevin Hart looking after a ...Read more
- A Rage to ConnectAt Eternity’s Gate a film by Julian Schnabel. With Willem Dafoe, Rubert Friend, Oscar Isaac, Emmanuelle Seigner. ****1/2 I don’t know how many movies there have been about Vincent Van Gogh, though I myself have seen three or four. I have not seen the 1956 portrayal by Kirk Douglas, and don’t believe I will. Ever since I was a kid ...Read more
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Dogen for the MassesWeird From the Get GoTwo MasterpiecesMary, Erica, MirandaUntil the End
View Other Essays by Topic
aging (121)American literature (218)art (114)Buddhism (170)Christianity (125)creative process (249)death and dying (139)meditation (124)movies (161)music (36)race (106)religion (188)sex (172)spirituality (171)the art of narrative (255)Uncategorized (20)world literature (23)