Shelley Winters once said of Marilyn Monroe, with whom she had roomed, “If she’d been a little less smart, she might have been happier.”
By the same token, it can be surmised that a fair number of dumber (or less smart) people are interested in seeing Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry, Darling.
Okay, they’re not so much dumb as not especially attuned or curious, and so they don’t care about Wilde schtupping Harry Styles during filming or Styles getting paid more than Florence Pugh or any of that stuff. Simple folk, common clay, etc. Movie, darkened theatre, comfy seat, popcorn…done.
Delicious film reviews can be either pans or raves, but the raves are better. And the ones that really get you going and stick to your ribs aren’t just concise or articulate or well-phrased. The very best ones absorb the artistry and special energy of a film and somehow convert it into charged prose. You’re reading but you can feel the film.
Read Owen Gleiberman’s Tar review and see what I mean.
…should ever wear a dark suit with a white-shirt-and-red-tie combo. Because Donald Trump has contaminated that scheme forever. No slam against Rod Lurie, of course — it just didn’t occur to him. Others may want to take note.
My only issue is with the words “this is healthy.” It is most certainly not healthy. That’s all I’m saying.
“Not happening…way too laid back…zero narrative urgency,” I was muttering from the get-go. Basically the sixth episode of White Lotus Thai SERIOUSLY disappoints. Puttering around, way too slow. Things inch along but it’s all “woozy guilty lying aftermath to the big party night” stuff. Glacial pace…waiting, waiting. I was told...
I finally saw Walter Salles' I'm Still Here two days ago in Ojai. It's obviously an absorbing, very well-crafted, fact-based poltical drama, and yes, Fernanda Torres carries the whole thing on her shoulders. Superb actress. Fully deserving of her Best Actress nomination. But as good as it basically is...
After three-plus-years of delay and fiddling around, Bernard McMahon's Becoming Led Zeppelin, an obsequious 2021 doc about the early glory days of arguably the greatest metal-rock band of all time, is opening in IMAX today in roughly 200 theaters. Sony Pictures Classics is distributing. All I can say is, it...
To my great surprise and delight, Christy Hall's Daddio, which I was remiss in not seeing during last year's Telluride Film Festival, is a truly first-rate two-hander -- a pure-dialogue, character-revealing, heart-to-heart talkfest that knows what it's doing and ends sublimely. Yes, it all happens inside a Yellow Cab on...
7:45 pm: Okay, the initial light-hearted section (repartee, wedding, hospital, afterlife Joey Pants, healthy diet) was enjoyable, but Jesus, when and how did Martin Lawrence become Oliver Hardy? He’s funny in that bug-eyed, space-cadet way… 7:55 pm: And now it’s all cartel bad guys, ice-cold vibes, hard bullets, bad business,...
Unless Part Two of Kevin Costner's Horizon (Warner Bros., 8.16) somehow improves upon the sluggish initial installment and delivers something...
For me, A Dangerous Method (2011) is David Cronenberg's tastiest and wickedest film -- intense, sexually upfront and occasionally arousing...