Category: movies
- Taking in the PainWind River a film by Taylor Sheridan. With Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Kelsey Asbille, Gil Birmingham. ***** When Wind River ended I turned to my wife and said, “That’s the most violent movie I’ve ever seen,” a statement which I soon realized was ridiculous. What I meant was that the violence was the most wrenching I’d ...Read more
- The Coma Was a Come-onThe Big Sick a film by Michael Showalter. With Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan, Holly Hunter, Ray Romano. ***** The Big Sick is so much the best movie I’ve seen this summer (I was happy just to find a movie I wanted to see), so unique as a romantic comedy, so perfect in the way it’s put ...Read more
- Serve Lots of WineBeatriz at Dinner a film by Miguel Arteta. With Salma Hayak, John Lithgow, Connie Britton, Chloe Sevigny. ***1/2 “Why have an ending that negates everything that happened in the whole movie?” my wife said to me as we left Beatriz at Dinner? I’d been troubled by the ending, though I wouldn’t have put so strongly. She ...Read more
- The Wonder of WomenWonder Woman a film by Patty Jenkins. With Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Robin Wright ***1/2 Arrival a film by Denis Villeneuve. With Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker ***** A Quiet Passion a film by Terence Davies. With Cynthia Nixon, Jennifer Ehle, Duncan Duff *** I’m as happy as everyone else that we finally have a movie about ...Read more
- Alcoholics PreposterousColossal a film by Nacho Vigalondo. With Anne Hathaway, Jason Sudeikis, Austin Stowell. *??? There’s a mind state called suspension of disbelief, where we overlook an unlikely aspect of a work of art because it is a premise of what we’re watching. The idea that James Bond would always do the right thing at the right ...Read more
- What’sYour Name, a film by Makato Shinkai, based on his novel. With Ryunosuke Kamiki, Mone Kamishiraishi, Ryo Narita. I’ve been reading Kobun Chino’s commentary on the Song of Awakening, and the day before I saw this film read the following passage: “When the body of all the buddhas penetrates my nature there is interpenetration and fusion. My nature ...Read more
- Doc, Ya Gotta Level Wit MeFull Frame Documentary Film Festival 2017 My Lineup: Whose Streets? / Still Tomorrow / The Good Postman / Abacus / Zaatari Djinn / Tribal Justice / Strong Island / Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities / Quest / The Force / May It Last: A Portrait of the Avett Brothers At ...Read more
- James Baldwin Has a QuestionI Am Not Your Negro a film by Raoul Peck. With James Baldwin, Samuel L. Jackson, Dick Cavett. ****1/2 In a way I wish the title of this film had gone further. The speech in the movie that it most closely reflects it is one by James Baldwin on a television interview: “What white people have ...Read more
- This Movie Is About You (Put Away Your Phone)Paterson A film by Jim Jarmusch. With Adam Driver, Golshifteh Farahani, Barry Shabaka Henley, Nellie. Every now and then people call something a Zen movie, and the candidate this year is Paterson, a film whose script Jim Jarmusch apparently wrote twenty years ago and in which almost nothing happens. A man (Adam Driver) awakens every morning ...Read more
- You Gotta Start SomewhereBeginners a film by Mike Mills. With Ewen McGregor, Christopher Plummer, Melanie Laurent, Mary Page Keller, Cosmo. I have the perfect solution for those who loved 20th Century Women and don’t know what to watch next (after they’ve read the profile of director Mike Mills in the New Yorker): watch Mills’ previous film Beginners, which streams ...Read more
- Maybe Not This VillageTwentieth Century Women a film by Mike Mills. With Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup, Lucas Jade Zumann. ****1/2 When I first heard the title of this movie, I thought, what the hell is a twentieth century woman? How is she different from a twenty-first century woman? But now that I’ve seen it, I think the ...Read more
- The Poetry of Everyday SpeechFences a film by Denzel Washington. Screenplay by August Wilson. With Denzel Washington, Viola Davis, Stephen Henderson, Jovan Adepo. When I was a young man growing up in Pittsburgh, I wanted to be the writer who put the city on the map. I read Theodore Dreiser’s Newspaper Days; he’d spent some time in the city, and ...Read more
- A Star is TornLa La Land a film by Damien Chazelle. With Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Rosemarie DeWitt. ***** I’ve said so many times that a movie is not this that I want to be clear when one is: this is the feel-good movie of the year, 2016, 2017, whatever year you got. From the moment it opens with ...Read more
- Uncle NutcaseManchester by the Sea. A film by Kenneth Longegan. With Casey Affleck, Kyle Chandler, Michelle Williams, Lucas Hedges. ***** Early in Manchester by the Sea, while the credits are rolling, there is a scene that continued to haunt me after the movie was over. Two brothers were out on a commercial fishing boat with the son ...Read more
- Black Boys Looking BlueSouth to a Very Old Place, Stomping the Blues, The Blue Devils of Nada, From the Briarpatch File from Collected Essays & Memoirs by Albert Murray. The Library of America. 1049 pp. $45.00. Moonlight, a film by Barry Jenkins, with Mahershala Ali, Duan Sanderson, Naomie Harris. ***** I haven’t finished the last few pieces from Collected Essays ...Read more
- That Ain’t FunnyThe Hollars, a film by John Krasinski and James Strouse. With Margo Martindale, Sharlto Copley, Richard Jenkins, Anna Kendrick. * The phrase I use for my title is one my son often repeated when he was four and five years old. We had just moved to a working class Durham neighborhood that abutted a textile mill, ...Read more
- Glug GlugSully, a film by Clint Eastwood. With Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney. I’ve always thought of Clint Eastwood as the King of the Grade B movie. One sure sign of Grade B is prolonged footage of a car driving somewhere, and there was ample such footage in Play Misty for Me, the first movie he ...Read more
- Banks Robbing MenHell or High Water, a film by David MacKenzie, written by Taylor Sheridan. With Jeff Bridges, Gil Birmingham, Chris Pine, Ben Foster. ***** Sometimes people take a genre movie, which has elements that many movies have, and take it to a whole new level. Sometimes that movie is overlooked for that very reason. Hell or High ...Read more
- Equal Rights to Live in HellEquity a film by Meena Menon and Amy Fox. With Anna Gunn, James Purefoy, Sarah Megan Thomas, Alysia Reiner.****1/2 This is the best movie about Wall Street I’ve ever seen. It’s probably the first one I ever understood. That doesn’t have to do with the fact that it’s about women. It has to do with expert ...Read more
- Get Your Buns Over HereSausage Party, a film by Gret Tiernan and Conrad Vernon. With Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill, James Franco, Edward Norton, and Salma Hayek. *** What a cast, right? Five Oscar nominees in one movie. Unfortunately, it’s an animated film about food products in the supermarket. The voices are great. But the cast doesn’t show its stuff. Apparently this ...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)