Sam Taylor-Johnson and E.L James‘ Fifty Shades of Grey (Universal, 2.13), which I saw last night at the Arclight in a theatre that was attended by a few media types but mostly by people you wouldn’t want to have dinner with if given a choice, is a sterile experience, to put it mildly. It’s faintly … Read more
Distracted this morning by Birdman euphoria and other matters, I now have 17 minutes to tap out something about Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig‘s Mistress America, a whipsmart, acrid, His Girl Friday-like comedy which I was entirely delighted with. Comedy is hard but making a fast, rat-a-tat-tat comedy is, I’m guessing, all the harder, especially … Read more
Quince…what? Day after day and hour after hour during the Sundance Film Festival I asked every journalist, distributor and agent I ran into what they’d seen and liked (or half-liked). I must have asked this question 60 or 70 times over the eight days I was up there… And nobody mentioned Quinceanera, a small-scale drama … Read more