“It feels like a trampoline up here” remarks Dylan Minette. His bandmates agree with him, and so do I. Despite years of concerts, I have never found myself gripping onto … Read More
Review: “MLK/FBI” explores the US government’s grudge against the iconic leader
This Friday, January 15, on the 92nd anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birth, a new documentary about the iconic civil rights leader will hit select theaters and video-on-demand. MLK/FBI is … Read More
Criterion Collection box set review: “Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema”
2020 was the year of Ingmar Bergman My big pop culture goal for 2020 was to watch all of Criterion’s “Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema” box set. I have not been ignorant … Read More
Review: Remembering Timothy Leary in “My Psychedelic Love Story”
The new documentary from groundbreaking filmmaker Errol Morris (The B-Side, The Fog of War), My Psychedelic Love Story, premieres Sunday night on Showtime. It profiles Joanna Harcourt-Smith, who was in a … Read More
Review: New doc “Belushi” seeks to find the man behind the comedy
The 1970s were a momentous time for American comedy. Thanks to now-hallowed institutions like the magazine National Lampoon, the sketch TV show Saturday Night Live, and the movie Animal House, the hippie-influenced counterculture … Read More
Movie review: “Dick Johnson Is Dead” is a poignant and darkly funny look at grief
Memoir and fantasy combine in the new documentary, Dick Johnson Is Dead Veteran documentary cinematographer Kirsten Johnson made her solo feature directing debut in 2016 with Cameraperson. That film was an … Read More
Movie Review: Binoche and Deneuve squabble over “The Truth”
Fabienne Dangeville, the septuagenarian film star played by Catherine Deneuve in The Truth (La Vérité), is an imposing, self-centered diva cut from the same cloth as Bette Davis’s Margo Channing in All About … Read More
Movie Review: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Rogue One As most of you Beastlings know, the latest chapter in the Star Wars saga, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story opens tonight, 16 December. And while Rogue one … Read More
Movie Review: “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” burns with repressed passion
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (not quite a literal translation of the French title, Portrait de la jeune fille en feu, but I’ll let it slide) is the kind of film … Read More
Movie Review: “Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project” profiles a VHS idealist
Technology merges with political idealism into a mad obsession in the new documentary, Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project. Driven by the desire to capture and catalogue the way that the … Read More
Movie Review: Dark comedy “Parasite” is the year’s best so far
The title of Bong Joon-Ho’s latest, Parasite, might lead viewers to suspect they are in for another wildly imaginative creature feature from the director of Okja and The Host. And sure, Bong’s tragicomedy features … Read More
Movie review: “Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice” gives the singer some of her due
Do you remember Linda Ronstadt? I’ve always had a fondness for her as a singer, thanks to some 7″ singles that my parents had of her head-bopping folk-rock renditions of … Read More
Movie review: “Cold Case Hammarskjöld” is a mostly true true-crime story
The self-consciously twisty new conspiracy doc Cold Case Hammarskjöld is the latest work of Danish director Mads Brügger, a journalist-comedian-provocateur kinda sorta in the Michael Moore vein. Brügger is drier, more … Read More
Movie review: Books and sex converge in the talky French flick “Non-Fiction”
I joked to a colleague before watching Olivier Assayas’s new comedy of manners, Non-Fiction (aka Doubles vies, or Double Lives), that I could already foresee what my review would be: “it’s good and … Read More