Category: movies
- Two MasterpiecesNickel Boys a film by RaMell Ross. With Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Hamish Linklater, Trey Perkins. Streaming on various platforms. ***** I felt about the movie Nickel Boys exactly the way I felt about the book; I wanted to see it but was half afraid to. There are many ways a movie could have ...Read more
- Losing ItBetween the Temples a film by Nathan Silver. With Jason Schwartzman, Carol Kane, Robert Smigel, Caroline Aaron, Madeleine Weinstein. Streaming on Netflix. **** Between the Temples has a homegrown, home-movieish feeling that I associate with movies from the sixties and seventies (the golden age of cinema as far as I’m concerned). From the opening shot, where ...Read more
- Keep an Eye on IgorAnora a film by Sean Baker. With Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Karren Karagulian, Yura Borisov. Streaming (by purchase) on Amazon Prime **** Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes. My feelings about this movie are largely informed by a conversation I had with my wife the morning after we saw it, as we took our long hike ...Read more
- Looks Pretty Good to MeMy Old Ass a movie by Megan Park. With Maisy Stella, Aubrey Plaza, Percy Hynes White, Maria Dizzia. Streaming on Amazon Prime. ***** I tend not to like movies about time travel. I don’t like gimmicky movies in general (a contemporary teenager goes back to the fifties and is at a total loss because they don’t ...Read more
- Elmore the GreatLast Stand at Saber River and Hombre from Westerns by Elmore Leonard. Library of America. pp. 1-278. ***** I love the story of Elmore Leonard’s formation as a writer that Greg Sutter tells in his excellent chronology at the back of the Library of America volume. Born in 1925, Leonard grew up in Detroit and attended ...Read more
- Facing DeathHis Three Daughters a film by Azazel Jacobs. With Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, Elizabeth Olsen, Jovan Adepo, Jay O. Sanders. Streaming on Netflix. ***** His Three Daughters is a sleeper, a Netflix original that we watched because we were fishing around for something to watch on a Saturday night, and it had just been reviewed in ...Read more
- Roll Out the OldstersThelma a film by Josh Margolis. With June Squibb, Fred Hechinger, Parker Posey, Clark Gregg, Richard Roundtree. Streaming (for a fee) on Apple+. **** Thelma is an oldster movie, a genre I haven’t written about for some time but which has not gone away. It is a crime movie in which the person going after the ...Read more
- My Life Is Disappearing Before My EyesRick Davison 1948-2023 The first thing you noticed about him was his appearance. He had a large, oblong-shaped head, which he kept closely cropped, small ears, severe heavy eyebrows. I believe I heard that he still had some of his baby teeth, that his adult teeth never came in. He was a big guy, but hunched ...Read more
- How to Live Your LifePerfect Days a film by Wim Wenders and Takuma Takasaki. With Koji Yakusho, Tokio Emoto. Streaming on various platforms. ***** Hirayama cleans public toilets in Tokyo (and that place has some fancy toilets. Some of them are almost futuristic). He has a small apartment where he lives in the Japanese fashion, mostly on the floor, moving ...Read more
- Book to MovieDirector Cord Johnson is a huge Percival Everett fan, and American Fiction seems perfectly to capture the spirit of Erasure. I was astounded.Read more
- Slippery SlopeCrook Manifesto a novel by Colson Whitehead. Doubleday. 319 pp. ***** There is the pleasure of reading a great crime writer, someone like Elmore Leonard at his best, who makes any other storyteller I know look like a rank amateur. There is the somewhat different pleasure of reading a great contemorary novelist, like Jonathan Franzen or ...Read more
- Two Gay MenGood Grief a film by Dan Levy. With Dan Levy, Ruth Nessa, Himesh Patel, Luke Evans. Streaming on Netflix ** Rustin a film by George C. Wolfe. With Colman Domingo, Ami Ameen, Glynn Turman, Chris Rock. Streaming on Netflix ***1/2 Good Grief tells the story of a man whose husband dies. Marc (Dan Levy) is living an ...Read more
- Make That March December. Maybe February.May December a film by Todd Haynes. With Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, Charles Melton. Streaming on various platforms. ** With all due respect to the various people who have suggested that this movie be nominated for Best Picture (including both reviewers at the New York Times), and fully understanding that Todd Haynes is into weird character ...Read more
- And of a MarriageAnatomy of a Fall a film by Justine Triet. With Sandra Huller, Milo Machado Graner, Samuel Theis. Streaming on Amazon Prime. ***** A friend whose opinion I respect recently said he hated this movie—and all courtroom dramas—because many things take place that never happen in a courtroom. I can’t argue with that, not having been in ...Read more
- The Ones Left BehindThe Holdovers a film by Alexander Payne. With Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa, Da’Vine Joy Randolph. In theaters and streaming for an arm and leg on Amazon Prime. ***** Three more or less sane adults (though one is just eighteen), all of whom have strong points, weak points, deeply held secrets, but none of whom is the ...Read more
- And Coming Out the Other SidePassing Through Veils a novel of dread by John Harrison. WordFire Press. 229 pp. ***** Psychologist B.F. Skinner said there are three things human beings fear: death, their own minds, and other people. That seems to cover the ground. But I sometimes think our mind is what we’re most afraid of. Meditation teacher Larry Rosenberg once ...Read more
- Call It What You Want. I Call It Great.A Thousand and One a film by A.V. Rockwell. With Teyana Taylor, William Catlett, Aaron Kingsley Adetola, Aven Courtney, Josiah Cross. Streaming on Prime and other platforms. ***** A Thousand and One is the best movie I’ve seen in years. It focuses on the black underclass—a group I need to learn about—but isn’t about pimps, whores, ...Read more
- The Quick and the DeadIronweed a novel by William Kennedy. Penguin. 227 pp. $18.00 ***** Despite my huge admiration for the first two novels in the Albany cycle, I can see why Ironweed was the prize winner. Kennedy’s writing reaches an apotheosis in this book, perhaps from the subject matter, perhaps just because he was growing in confidence. In 1983, ...Read more
- Charmingly DespicableLegs a novel by William Kennedy. Penguin. 317 pp. $17.00. ***** William Kennedy burst onto the literary scene in 1983 with the novel Ironweed, his fourth. My memory is that he’d had trouble finding a publisher because his earlier novels hadn’t sold. In an act of desperation he got in touch with Saul Bellow, whom he’d ...Read more
- FreshAir a film by Ben Affleck. With Matt Damon, Jason Bateman, Chris Messina, Viola Davis, Matthew Maher. Streaming on Amazon. ***** I have often said, in reviewing some grim work of art, “It’s not the feel-good movie of the year.” I meant that as a compliment. We don’t want to feel good. We want to see ...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)