Category: movies
- In a PickleMaggie’s Plan a film by Rebecca Miller. With Greta Gerwig, Ethan Hawke, Julianne Moore. **** The first thing to be said about Maggie’s Plan is that it is a comedy. I don’t care what Rebecca Miller has done in the past and I don’t care how serious the conversation seems at the beginning of the movie. ...Read more
- Get the Water Boiling and Melt Some ButterThe Lobster A film by Yorgos Lanthimos. With Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Jessica Barden *1/2 The first thing I should mention is that, in the extremely progressive and liberal-minded community in which I watched this movie, Asheville, North Carolina, where people will do anything for entertainment—they’ll stop and watch a guy playing a kazoo on the street—fully ...Read more
- Jane Austen Meets MachiavelliLove & Friendship A film by Whit Stillman, with Kate Beckinsale, Chloe Sevigny, Xavier Samuel, Tom Bennett. ****1/2 Love & Friendship centers on a single character—Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale)—and she controls the action the way a great conductor directs an orchestra. She is not only in almost every scene but is the focus of those ...Read more
- Beyond BeliefDon’t Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan’s Greatest Zen Master By Brad Warner. New World Library. 306 pp. $16.95. [This is the sixth in a series on Dogen’s Zen, inspired by Brad Warner’s new book paraphrasing fascicles of the Shobogenzo. This series has got to end sometime but hasn’t ended yet. Earlier ...Read more
- Stop Me Before I See More Movies!Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2016 Thursday The Jazz Loft According to W. Eugene Smith *** Forever, Chinatown **1/2 The 100 Years Show **** The Many Sad Faces of Mr. Toledano **** By Sydney Lumet ***1/2 Weiner **1/2 Friday The Black Belt *** Trapped **** Dancing for You ***** Dixieland ** Tarikat ***** Horizons **** Two Trains Runnin’ **** Saturday Following Seas ***** Life, Animated **** Raising Bertie ** Hours spent standing in line, sometimes ...Read more
- The Texture of Every DayJim Harrison 1937-2016 I’ve been haunted this week by the death of Jim Harrison, whom I’ve described for years as my favorite living writer and whose books I bought as soon as they came out, without reading a review or glancing through them. Only once did he let me down. I’ve wondered specifically if The Ancient ...Read more
- She Wasn’t Just a Dotty Old Lady IIThe Lady in the Van. A film by Nicholas Hytner. With Maggie Smith, Jim Broadbent, Alex Jennings. I’m as much a fan of oldster movies as anyone—they’re about me, after all—and, like everyone else in the world, I love Maggie Smith. I especially like her as the outraged Dowager Countess on Downton Abbey, though the series ...Read more
- She Wasn’t Just a Dotty Old LadyIris Murdoch As I Knew Her by A.N. Wilson. Arrow Books. 276 pp. Those Brits do keep writing, don’t they? I look at the titles by A. N. Wilson, who is my rough contemporary (two years younger than I, actually) and I’m astonished, and somewhat ashamed, to see thirty books. (Compared to six for me. Eight ...Read more
- The Bitter Face of a Marriage45 Years A Film by Andrew Haigh In the same weekend, a friend e-mailed to tell me that 45 Years was a great film—he had just seen it with his wife to celebrate his 63rd birthday—and I heard another friend say, to someone who asked, “Don’t bother. The whole damn thing is too depressing.” I don’t think ...Read more
- I’m Eeenocent!Hail, Caesar! a film by the Coen brothers. For me the most surprising moment in Hail, Caesar was when the credits started to roll. I couldn’t believe an hour and forty-five minutes had passed. It seemed like about an hour. I also couldn’t believe that was all there was to the movie. They should have had ...Read more
- (Not Much)Room A Film by Lenny Abrahamson “Though the hut is small it includes the entire world.” –Sekito Kosan. Song of the Grass Roof Hut The background to the movie Room is a horrific crime: a man kidnaps a seventeen year old girl, puts her in a storage shed in his back yard, and keeps her there for seven ...Read more
- The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name Just SpokeCarol a film by Todd Haynes Carol is an almost unbelievably stylized, artful film. It isn’t just that the movie is a work of art, or that every scene is a work of art; every shot is a work of art. A shot of Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett) riding away in a rain-sprinkled cab is full ...Read more
- I Me Mine I Me Mine I Me MineThe Big Short A film by Adam McKay The problem is human greed. That was my conclusion after watching the terrifically entertaining and stomach-churning film The Big Short. People have all kinds of solutions: we’ve got to break up Wall Street, we’ve got to punish the banks, we’ve got to put people in jail, but I ...Read more
- You Didn’t Know You Had It Until It Was GoneYouth A Film by Paolo Sorrentino “Two seniors for youth.” It was a funny remark that I didn’t realize I was making until I said it. But then, apparently, it was adopted all the way down the ticket line. If that Saturday afternoon showing in Asheville was any indication, the people who are seeing this movie ...Read more
- Mac the KnifeMacbeth A film by Justin Kurzel My wife thinks this film is a great work of art which captures the original primal energy of the Macbeth story, and thinks everyone should go see it (though she acknowledges not everyone will. By a long shot). I thought it was an interesting production but had lots of reservations ...Read more
- Only the Dead Know ItBrooklyn A film by John Crowley Brooklyn is like a dream. Like Bridge of Spies it takes place in 1950’s America (apparently the year is 1952, because our young couple sees Singin’ in the Rain), and like that earlier movie it gets the look of the era right. But while Bridge of Spies focused on a ...Read more
- Everybody Knew but Nobody Was Talkin’Spotlight A film by Tom McCarthy Spotlight is an absolutely thrilling movie, one of those newspaper movies where reporters shout at each other, slam their fists on the desk, burst into the records office a few minutes before closing time, run down the sidewalk shouting for a taxi, stay up too late, write at incredible speeds, ...Read more
- These People Want to Kill Us AllBridge of Spies A Film by Steven Spielberg The first thing you notice is that they got the look right. Not just the streets and the cars, but the people. Fifties fathers didn’t work out at the gym or train for triathalons. They ate pastrami on rye for lunch and pot roast for dinner, the mashed ...Read more
- Portrait of a TurdSteve Jobs A Film by Danny Boyle I’m a little slow on the uptake, often don’t read reviews of movies before I see them, so I was into the final third of Steve Jobs before I realized that this was a drama in three acts, that it focused on three specific moments, that the same characters ...Read more
- Not all that FreeFreeheld A Film by Peter Sollett This is a leukemia movie. Also a gay and lesbian movie, and a film about social justice, but most basically, and most movingly, it is a film about someone who dies. That’s the emotional focus. As I walked out of the theater, I said to my wife, “Why didn’t they ...Read more
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Yes You Can Go Home AgainHow to Live Your LifeYou Need to be WritingThe Other SideThe River is Freedom, the Raft Paradise
View Other Essays by Topic
aging (114)American literature (198)art (110)Buddhism (163)Christianity (120)creative process (232)death and dying (128)meditation (118)movies (153)music (36)race (95)religion (181)sex (158)spirituality (168)the art of narrative (238)Uncategorized (19)world literature (23)