Beltmann

Margaret / This viewing: Extended Edition Still love this movie. It's a Great American Novel about many things, but mostly about three things: A mother, a daughter and New York City. Throughout Margaret, private lives and public spaces coalesce while the architecture eavesdrops in a way that reminds me of Hawthorne: "The dell was to be left in solitude among its dark, old trees, which, with their multitudinous tongues, would whisper long of what had passed there, and no mortal be the wiser. And the melancholy brook would add this other tale to the mystery with which its

Lurker Pairing this with The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford would create a fascinating double bill about weaselly fans; what Jesse makes subtext, Lurker makes text... until it turns itself inside out, becoming an ultra-modern spin on the celebrity leech story. Or is it a vampire story?

Is This Thing On? Much better than Maestro, the previous movie directed by Bradley Cooper. partially because it's show-offy in less show-offy ways. Laura Dern is so, so good in this.

Primate "Why doesn't anyone in this movie ever turn on the frickin' lights?," asked the exasperated woman sitting next to me. There are some memorable kills in this horror movie, but after that, it's about as lazy as they come.

Sovereign Extra half star for the Jeff Tweedy song performed over the end credits and for the perfect final shot, which movingly brings together the movie's ideas about fathers, sons and ideological failure. In terms of diagnosing the social diseases, and resulting psychological havoc, that have led to our current political malignancy, this is a good start. Unfortunately, at this grotesque stage, with new and worsening symptoms at every turn, we need much more than a good start. Sovereign may be a movie of the moment, but it already feels behind the times.

As a roller coaster aficionado, let me tell you there's zero chance a ride op would let Kyle Marvin, or any rider, buckle in while holding bags of goldfish. Sure, Marvin ends up delivering one of the year's best bits of physical comedy, but to exist, the joke must first be forced, and that helps explain why, after a brilliant opening 30 minutes, I began to increasingly resist this movie's charms. Too often Splitsville feels like it needs to secure its loose articles; in coaster enthusiast parlance, it's the GP (general public) version of a screwball comedy or a Rohmer scenario. Much of it is w

If I wanted to watch cutscenes, I could have stayed home and fired up the PS5. I'm increasingly impatient with movies that feel more like outlines than movies, with dialogue and themes that are basically presented in bullet-point form. This is like watching fourth graders play with action figures.

Coulda sworn I had previously seen the 1979 version of Caligula, but now that I'm looking, I can't find any record of it. Perhaps over the years my mind began to conflate Fellini's Satyricon with Caligula so that I became convinced I had seen both. Regardless, I'm in no position to say whether this 2023 reconstitution is a major improvement; it's still lurid, unchecked and nakedly ambitious (sorry). But just on a purely sensory level, it's all of a piece. The grandly preposterous set designs erase the line between art and decadence (might we call it Art Deca?), the images are morbidly enthrall

There are many bruising scenes in Christy, but they largely take place outside of the ring, because this sports biopic about trailblazing female boxer Christy Salters (Sydney Sweeney) is actually a domestic abuse drama that charts her relationship with Jim Martin (Ben Foster), her husband and trainer. Unfortunately, the screenplay punches below its weightiness, ticking off the usual boxes within a mechanical framework that contains no surprises. (A better movie would have started rather than ended with the shocking violence that nearly killed Salters; last year's The Fire Inside might be a use

For decades this movie has been a sticking point between me and my brother-in-law (a great friend but not really a movie guy). We saw it together at Milwaukee's Downer Theatre in 2001; I loved it and he loathed it. Each time I rewatch the film, I tell him to give this obvious masterpiece another chance. He politely dry heaves. When it placed fifth in the most recent Sight and Sound Greatest Films list, you can be sure I let him know about it. (And you can be sure he gave me the finger.) Twenty-four years ago I was still writing regular film reviews, and of course In the Mood for Lo

Becoming Led Zeppelin: More music docs should have the confidence--and respect for art--to include footage of full songs being played live, even long, expansive songs, maybe especially long, expansive songs.

Eddington A bumper sticker masquerading as a provocation masquerading as an X-ray. Its dubious premise--the pandemic as ground zero for American pathologies like polarization, extremism, conspiracies, buffoonery and dysfunction--is a classic case of mistaking a symptom (cough, cough) for the disease. It's also about how technology and religion now ramp things up at warp speed, even encouraging people to live in separate realities, but is it an echo or an oversight that the story takes place in an American small town with dynamics that literally exist nowhere? (Perhaps John Waters c

I tend to like Jason Statham movies, but A Working Man is colossally bad, a tired, by-the-numbers stump that is substandard in every which way. Each scene is presented as if the script never evolved past the outline stage. There's no personality, no style, no suspense. But it's worse than that: The last thing we need right now is a dopey cartoon that glorifies extralegal measures and knowingly stokes the same fears that are currently being used to justify such authoritarian impulses. "It's just entertainment," you might say, and I hear ya. But right now, I can't help but feel that "escapism" a

Last month one of my most inquisitive students engaged me in a discussion about the role those with settler privilege might play in decolonization. When might gestures toward allyship become a form of recolonization? That’s an important question, but it’s one that primarily occupies the Western mind and presumes a Western point of view. Our conversation came to mind while watching Mati Diop’s excellent new documentary Dahomey, which chronicles the return of 26 treasures that were stolen from the Kingdom of Dahomey more than a century ago by French colonial troops. Today in the West

I didn't buy large swathes of Magazine Dreams, but I was nevertheless riveted. Sometimes a fearless performance, and the right tone, can carry a movie right past its many flaws. We are invited deep into Killian Maddox's head, and we leave with him deep inside of our own.

"If you understand what I'm talking about, you're gonna take the money. If you don't, then I'm gonna have to worry about you." Liked Bound a bunch in '96, but at the time I wouldn't have guessed that it was destined to become one of the decade's defining movies. (I've seen this watery, handsy noir more times than just about any other movie from that era, and the new Criterion 4K makes all those whites and blacks and reds look better than ever.)

Update: Watched and LOVED.

Hell yes. Awesome!

I've really been rocked by this loss, much more than I anticipated. Obviously David Lynch was a major artist--some of his films mean a great deal to me--but he was also an articulate advocate for personal art and in every which way a fantastic human being. Those familiar only with his movies might be surprised to discover that the artist behind that strange, abrasive content was in real life the (slightly off-kilter) Guy Next Door, a big softie, a generous spirit who loved people and loved being kind. I think this loss hits me harder than most "celebrity" deaths because he's been a constant pr

That's a strong list. I liked all of 'em--except for The Seed of the Sacred Fig, which I haven't seen yet. (I have a copy here, though, and am eager to watch soon.) Speaking of Mohammad Rasoulof... I'm friendly with an obscure Iranian documentarian who splits her time between Tehran and Milwaukee, and some years back I invited her to see Rasoulof's Manuscripts Don't Burn with me. Afterward, she dropped the bombshell that she knew Rasoulof and was a little pissed: "I'm going to yell at him when I go back to Iran. He didn't warn me that it would be so grim. It was like watching a documentar

The chemistry between Keke Palmer and Sza is so electric, their hijinks are so funny, and the pace is so zippy that when the main plot arc of One of Them Days succumbs to formula it feels a little deflating. Still, when no one's looking the movie spikes the punch bowl: The coolest thing about this supercool comedy is the way the script sardonically reflects upon American economic inequality and the intersection of class, race and capitalism. It's all so breezy that it might be easy to underestimate its lethal takedowns. Heed has not been taken!

Yesterday I stumbled upon an old Super 8 film shot by my father in the summer of 1980. It features the six-year-old me riding a bicycle on the dead-end street leading to our village apartment in Jackson, Wisconsin. No cars, no fear... until, as the movie undeniably proves, our asshole mailbox refused to yield the right of way. My mind doesn't actually remember that crash--I must trust the movie when it tells me about that day, including how my silly faces mugged for the camera--but I do remember the sensations of that chrysalis age, and comprehend how those sensations entered a kind of perpetu

I've seen All of Us Strangers three times now (this viewing: Criterion's 4K disc) and it just keeps getting better. It's the kind of film that asks you to scoot forward and lean in before it whispers its secrets to you. I love this movie.

Despite their stylistic differences, both Edward Berger's Conclave and Clint Eastwood's Juror #2 feel like distressed responses to the same five-alarm fire. At a time when ideological divides in the Western world have led leading democracies to empower strongmen, Berger contemplates what it means to be a good leader and Eastwood goes even further, pondering whether "truth" and "justice" have been made so malleable that their utility has been vaporized. Both of these movies put on a good show, but it's hard to watch without trembling, too. The closing shots of Juror #2 have been wid

I'm unfamiliar with Gregory Maguire's novel and the Broadway musical, so perhaps they have more to offer than this movie's primitive proposal: What if everything we knew about the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch was wrong? The first two-thirds of the movie answers that question in the most generic of ways, with a patchy songbook, sludgy visuals, and interminable scenes that simply do not have the dramatic weight to warrant such bloat. (The best this anti-fascism allegory can muster is some performative dismay, which hardly meets this moment in American history.)