Category: movies
- 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
- Famously ObscureTrue Grit a novel by Charles Portis. From Charles Portis: Collected Works. Library of America. pp. 111-261. $45.00. ***** One of the most wonderful things about True Grit is the voice of its narrator, whom we take to be the fourteen-old-girl who is going through this adventure, but who is actually much older, “a woman with ...Read more
- What Strikes Fear into Every Man’s Heart?Women Talking a film by Sarah Polley. With Rooney Mara, Judith Ivey, Emily Mitchell, Kate Hallett. Streaming on Apple TV. ***** Reflections on a Movie In Women Talking, a group of women finally gets together to talk about the things nobody has been saying. It is based on a novel about Miriam Toews, and borrows its premise ...Read more
- War Is AbsurdThe Banshees of Inisherin a film by Martin McDonagh. With Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan. Streaming on HBO Max. **** I can’t remember ever saying this before, but I enjoyed thinking about this movie more than actually watching it. The watching was sometimes excruciating, especially because my wife kept jumping up and leaving ...Read more
- Human ConsciousnessMrs. Dalloway a novel by Virginia Woolf and The Hours a novel by Michael Cunningham. A Combined Edition. Picador. 417 pp. (more or less). $20.00. ***** I haven’t read much Virginia Woolf and don’t have any particular excuse. She was all the rage in the seventies and eighties, when her diaries and letters were coming out. ...Read more
- Portrait of the Artist as a MegalomaniacTar a film by Todd Field. With Cate Blanchett, Noemie Merlat, Nina Hoss. In theaters and available for an arm and a leg on Prime Video. Well worth the money. ***** Tar begins brilliantly, with its protagonist Lydia Tar (Cate Blanchett) calming herself for a performance, fidgeting, doing special breathing and relaxation exercises, readying herself in ...Read more
- Me EitherI Am Not Sidney Poitier: A Novel By Percival Everett. Graywolf Press. 234 pp. $16.00 **** There is a kind of writer who plans out his books in great detail. No less a literary eminence than P.G. Wodehouse, for instance, spent weeks planning and taking notes and writing outlines in order to write one of his ...Read more
- Pass the BottleAll My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers a novel by Larry McMurtry. Liveright. 277pp. $15.95 **** Everybody loves a story about a fuck-up. When you read about a guy who is as likely to spend the night on a couch in the university library as he is in his bed at home (he has a ...Read more
- Two People TalkingDrive My Car a film by Ryusuke Hamaguchi. With Hidetosha Nishijima, Toko, Miura, Reika Kirishima, Park YuRim. Streaming on HBO Max. ***** Drive My Car is so fundamentally strange a movie that it’s hard to know how to talk about it. The full credits, for instance, don’t appear until forty minutes in. There are still two ...Read more
- The Weak Are the StrongThe Power of the Dog a film by Jane Campion. With Benedict Cumberbatch, Jesse Plemons, Kirstin Dunst, Kodi Smit-McPhee. Streaming on Netflix. ***** The Power of the Dog has such an air of menace that it’s almost unbearable to watch. It’s set in Montana in the early part of the 20th century (though it was filmed ...Read more
- Comedy as TragedyDon’t Look Up a film by Adam McKay. With Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett. ***** Don’t Look Up is a comic masterpiece, the Dr. Strangelove of our time. It holds a mirror up to this country and captures it exactly. You watch this movie and laugh until you cry. Then you just cry. ...Read more
- I’m Crying UncleCry Macho a film by Clint Eastwood. With Clint Eastwood, Dwight Yoakam, Natalia Traven, Eduardo Minett ** Many years ago, I saw Merce Cunningham appear in a dance he had choreographed. He was in his mid-sixties, and though the spirit was willing the flesh was weak. Dance is all about young beautiful flexible bodies, and he ...Read more
- MeantownMare of Easttown a TV Mini Series by Craig Zobel. Written by Brad Ingelsby. With Kate Winslett, Julianne Nicholson, Jean Smart, Guy Pearce. HBO. ****1/2 As a person who grew up in Pennsylvania, I know there is an element of crabby, pessimistic, life-denying people who live there, especially in the smaller industrial communities. There’s also another ...Read more
- She Doesn’t Give a Rat’s AssI Care a Lot a film by J Blakeson. With Rosamund Pike, Peter Dinklage, Eliza Gonzalez, Diane Wiest. Streaming on Netflix. ***** I Care a Lot—a comedy—is the most morally despicable movie I’ve seen in years. The female protagonists are the most hateful characters I can recall in a film. It includes stomach-churning violence, has any ...Read more
- It Grows AnywhereMinari a film by Lee Isaac Chung. With Alan Kim, Yeri Han, Noel Choe, Steven Yeun, Will Patton, Youn Yuh-jung. Amazon Prime. ***** The wonderful thing about Minari is how ordinary it is. When I heard that it was about a Korean family trying to settle themselves in Arkansas, I figured there would be all kinds ...Read more
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All Shook UpWhat's in a Song? IIWriting for his LifeWhat’s in a Song?Mixed Feelings
View Other Essays by Topic
aging (127)American literature (226)art (123)Buddhism (171)Christianity (132)creative process (262)death and dying (144)meditation (125)movies (167)music (42)race (110)religion (196)sex (187)spirituality (174)the art of narrative (266)Uncategorized (21)world literature (23)